Lonewood  Corner.     By  John  Halsham.    New 
York:  E.  P.  Button  &  Co. 
One  of  the  marvels  of  English  rustic  life 
lies   in   the   rich   material   it    still   affords, 
after  such  reapers  as  Walton,  Borrow,  Jef- 
fries, Hardy,  and  the  whole  host  of  outdoor 
chroniclers    have    loved    and    described    its 
mind  and  aspect.    A  poorer  field  would  offer 
scant  reward  to  the  most  patient  gleaner. 
In  dealing  with  this  life,   "Lonewood  Cor- 
ner"  arrives  at  a   certain  charm   from   its 
impregnation  with  the  quality — so  grateful 
to     some     palates — of     being     unutterably, 
deeply  English.     The  author  respects   tra- 
dition; he  enjoys  looking  back.     It  is  high- 
ly  characteristic   that  he   despises   Marcus 
Aurelius    ("Stodge"    is   the   epithet   he    ap- 
j  plies)  as  "one  of  those  people  who  can  only 
j  think   of  infinity   in  one  ^direction.  taa4f-it- 


•-  •       '       -AJ01S 

Pl<n    Aq^ins    pa?    oiqTsnBid-  ueAa    'SuiutB} 


-jaiua  AV9A  -3  lifts'  st  }i   'i««^18ra  ui 
-ndo  A-lSnojaisodaad  a}mb  saran  W  JI  ' 
st  n-e  TiaqA  puy    -asn  o^  ^nd  aaaq  uaaq 

srao^sna  mojj  'I91T 
uaaq    P^q    ^^    2uiq^AJ8Ag 

aaaqdsora^  aq^  o; 

enp  ui  ejB  uadd^q  iTJqi  sSuiq^  aq;  aoj  i 
iBjanaS    aq;   jo 
si  siq^  } 

-an?  pm?  AaamiiTta  aq^  aa«  pan^^P  °s  'saan 
-u-em  jo  iaAou  aqi  s^uaos  auo  saran  W    '** 
s^uapioui  aq^  ^nq  'Jioiq^  AIJIBJ  st 
aqx     'uosBaa;  PUB  'Sui^ai-POOW  <8A°l 
PUB    aAOi   ana^   'siBqBO   lanoo    sapisaq 
30 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 


ol    apyo\   r}]v   ttdvoiav 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

A   COUNTRYMAN'S    HORIZONS 


BY 

JOHN   HALSHAM 

AUTHOR  OF  "IDLBHURST" 


Satius  est  .  .  ,  otiosum  esse  quam  nihil  agere 


NEW  YORK 
E.  P.  BUTTON  &  COMPANY 

3I  WEST   TWENTY-THIRD    STREET 
1907 


PRINTED  BY 

WILLIAM  CLOWES  AND  SONS,  LIMITED 
LONDON  AND  EECCLES 


NOTE 

THE  Author's  thanks  are  due  to  the  Editor 
of  The  Saturday  Review  for  leave  to  embody 
here  the  substance  of  five  articles  which 
have  appeared  in  that  Review. 


961695 


LONEWOOD    CORNER 


INTRODUCTORY 

My  DEAR  PATERSON, 

Ten  years  ago  I  addressed  to  you,  and 
through  you  to  what  we  call  the  reading  public,  a 
few  pages  by  way  of  introduction  to  the  country 
journal  which  I  named  "  Idlehurst."  Here  is 
another  book  ready  to  go  into  the  world ;  and  it 
seems  fitting,  as  both  you  and  I  have  maintained 
our  fixity  of  place  and  of  humours  through  so 
considerable  a  portion  of  our  course,  that  I  should 
mark  our  consistency  in  a  fleeting  scene  by  making 
you  in  the  second  book  fulfil  the  same  office  which 
you  did  in  the  first.  I  have  indeed  moved  my 
tabernacle  a  few  geographical  miles,  to  drive  my 
stakes  all  the  faster  in  the  clay  of  the  Weald  ;  and 
you,  though  you  no  longer  look  over  the  Heath  to 
the  great  cauldron  simmering  under  its  fumes,  yet 
tell  me  that  Golder's  Green  is  practically  Hamp- 
stead  still ;  in  all  other  conditions  I  think  we  may 
claim  to  have  resisted  very  fairly  Time's  alteration. 

I  B 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

And  yet  there  is  a  large  difference  between  the 
antecedents  of  the  first  book  and  of  the  last. 
"  Idlehurst "  grew  together  with  an  ease  that  seems 
almost  astonishing  now,  in  desultory  fits  and  odd 
hours  of  summer  out-of-doors ;  there  was,  I  sup- 
pose, a  certain  amount  of  matter,  the  accumulation 
of  a  good  many  years,  undrawn-on  and  ready  to 
run  over  on  to  paper  by  a  sort  of  capillary 
attraction  in  the  fingering  of  a  pencil.  With  the 
second  collection,  though  there  was  no  doubt 
something  of  old  material  unexhausted,  and  some- 
thing of  new  has  accrued  in  the  interval,  the  vein 
never  seemed  to  run  with  the  unlaborious  trickle 
of  earlier  days.  The  reason  is  perhaps  not  far  to 
seek:  the  first  papers  were  casual  and  irrespon- 
sible, taken  up  and  left  at  the  sole  instance  of 
humours  and  chances,  with  scarcely  a  thought  of 
public  suffrages  till  they  had  almost  come  to  full 
shape.  When  an  author  has  once  spoken  with  the 
world,  that  early  ease  and  carelessness  can  never 
come  again  ;  the  shield  is  suspended  on  the 
pavilion,  or  if  you  like  the  figure  better,  the  shutters 
are  down,  and  the  adventurer  is  under  the  law  of 
the  comparative.  By  the  public  I  mean  here  not 
the  unknown  vast  into  which  an  author  pitches  his 
voice,  the  void  which,  for  any  human  echo  that 
comes  back  to  him,  might  be  the  primal  chaos 
itself ;  but  the  tangible  few  here  and  there  in  the 
profound — candid  friends  and  friends  of  friends, 
strangers  who  turned  into  friends,  one  or  two 

2 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

reviewers,  material  instead  of  vaguely  kind,  critics 
casual  but  pertinent,  heard  of  at  the  third  or 
fourth  rebound — from  whom  some  sort  of  personal 
answer  has  returned.  It  is  these,  I  think,  which 
an  author— in  the  earlier  stages  of  his  career,  at 
least — should  have  in  mind  ;  more,  perhaps,  than 
some  more  customary  censures.  For  myself,  in 
presenting  my  new  book,  I  take  a  good  deal  of 
pains  to  consider  the  criticism  of  the  old,  as  it 
comes  back  to  me  from  those  points  of  solid  mean- 
ing in  the  intangible  vast.  I  note  a  consensus  of 
feeling  that  there  was  no  harm  in  the  thing:  a 
general  attribution  of  a  sedative,  if  not  a  soporific 
effect,  acceptable  in  certain  kinds  of  fatigue  or 
convalescence,  and  sometimes  serviceable  as  a 
nightcap  :  of  a  desultoriness  which  made  it  suitable 
for  reading  piecemeal  at  odd  times,  together  with 
a  certain  homogeneous  quality  which  has  made 
people — sometimes  quite  unlikely  people,  as  I 
should  have  judged — capable  of  reading  it  through 
as  much  as  a  dozen  times.  These  are  charac- 
teristics, among  those  which  it  is  proper  to  discuss, 
which  I  can  admit  at  once  ;  a  gift  of  mild-eyed 
melancholy,  though  I  fail  to  observe  it  myself,  I 
will  not  dispute  against  some  very  respectable 
critics.  In  reply  to  a  few  hints  that  there  are  here 
and  there  pedantic  leanings  to  be  discovered,  and 
a  too  liberal  sprinkling  of  quotations  and  tags  in 
the  dead  languages,  I  would  ask  the  anti-classical 
rebukers  to  skip  the  offending  scraps,  and  believe 

3 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

that  they  are  an  old  sort  of  Abracadabra  spell, 
which,  even  if  it  does  not  conjure,  as  some  old- 
fashioned  people  declare  it  does,  is  at  least  harm- 
less to  robuster  minds,  and  may  be  avoided  without 
seriously  dislocating  the  text.  To  ladies — if  there 
be  any  still  who  are  not  learned — I  make  no 
apology ;  I  know  how  they  appreciate  the  air  of 
those  light  italics  which  relieve  the  solid  page. 

It  is  critics  with  some  such  prepossessions  as 
these  that  I  should  wish  to  please,  and  that  I  run 
the  risk  of  disappointing,  with  my  new  collection. 
I  believe  that  I  am  at  least  conscious  of  the  various 
mishaps  possible  in  the  carrying  out  of  the  design ; 
I  know  the  Nemesis  which  not  infrequently  attends 
upon  continuations  and  sequels  ;  I  recognise  the 
chance  that  all  the  lighter  spirit  which  originally 
worked  to  a  perhaps  half  lucky  result  may  have 
altogether  evaporated  in  the  repetition,  the  just- 
caught  balance  of  humours  may  have  passed  into 
a  weighty  pose.  I  know  the  sad  declensions 
unawares  to  disproportionate  emphasis,  to  formula, 
to  sentiment,  to  sermons.  You,  at  least,  will  not 
accuse  me  of  making  light  of  the  peculiar  dis- 
advantages of  middle  age  ;  you  will  have  heard 
me  blame  the  unbent  nerves,  the  hesitation  about 
sticking  the  point  of  one's  mind  into  the  middle  of 
sometimes  tvvy-seeming  truth  ;  I  see  that  a  man 
may  accustom  himself  to  the  pleasures  of  the 
fallentis  semita  vita  till,  like  a  rabbit  in  the 
poacher's  wire,  he  hangs  himself  up  through 

4 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

treading  his  one  little  track  across  the  green 
meadows  of  the  world.  Other  habits  and  states 
there  are  which  hinder  a  free  traffic  in  feelings  and 
opinions  ;  such  as  the  natural  lowering  of  tempera- 
ture in  one's  enthusiasm,  the  temptation  to  love 
irony  for  its  own  sake,  the  position — in  which  I 
have  been  for  some  time  pretty  well  rooted — that 
one's  adversaries  in  various  sorts  of  debate  have 
ceased  to  count,  while  the  main  difficulties  come 
from  the  upholders  of  one's  own  side. 

Against  these  discouragements  I  can  set  a 
tolerable  array  of  gains.  Ten  years  can  do  a 
good  deal  to  condense  the  aqueous  principle  of 
sentiment  into  solid  bottoming  of  knowledge ;  in 
that  space  I  find  that  humanity  has  supplied  me 
with  support  and  proof  to  my  theories  in  the 
kindest  possible  way ;  my  dealings  with  books 
(more  and  more  among  the  untainted  witnesses 
of  the  old  world)  bring  me  continuous  accessions 
of  confidence  and  ratifications  of  lucky  shots. 
Every  day  adds  a  touch  to  fill  in  the  sketch-ideas 
of  the  prime ;  early  notions,  shooting  out  in  seem- 
ing-random right  lines  like  the  first  growth  of 
ice-crystals  on  a  pond,  are  crossed  and  recrossed 
by  others  at  all  angles,  and  are  presently  meshed 
up  to  a  practicable  solidity.  (The  illustration  has, 
no  doubt,  a  suggestion  of  frigidity,  but  I  leave  it 
to  your  good  sense.)  There  is  clear  gain  in  the 
middle-aged  frame  of  mind  which  knows  that 
"il-y-a  des  pertes  triomphantes  a  1'envy  des 

5 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

victoires,"  which  can  let  the  press  go  by,  and  is 
content  to  serve  with  a  clear-eyed  courage  that 
mistress  who  neither  grants  nor  refuses  anything, 
neither  follows  nor  flies.  And,  lastly,  there  is  gain 
in  a  detail  of  the  domestic  management  of  one's 
mind,  the  usage  of  reserve  so  that  a  man  may 
keep  open  house,  and  let  the  world  have  the  run 
of  his  hall  and  stairs,  his  picture-gallery  or  library, 
may  admit  accredited  people  even  to  a  private 
parlour,  yet  keep  the  key  of  a  room  or  so  to 
himself,  perhaps  even  have  a  little  oratory  in  the 
heart  of  the  house,  unsuspected  behind  the  secret 
door  in  the  panelling. 

I  have  admitted  that  there  may  be  dangers  in 
the  making  of  continuation  or  sequel-books  ;  but 
perhaps  after  all  the  present  volume  will  be  found 
to  follow  its  predecessor  at  a  safe  distance.  You 
will  see  that  the  ten  years  have  shifted  the  scene 
and  changed  the  persons.  My  walks  are  no  more 
in  Arnington  ;  and  even  if  they  were,  I  could  not 
have  drawn  many  of  the  old  faces.  The  Rector, 
talking  of  having  been  too  long  on  the  ground, 
has  gone  away  to  a  small  living  in  Lincolnshire ; 
Alice  is  married  in  India  ;  Bob  is  working  on  a 
railway  in  Natal ;  Margaret  Fletcher  is  a  nurse 
in  the  North  ;  Gervase  French  is  in  London, 
gone  out  of  my  ken.  Others  of  the  old  company 
I  sometimes  see  for  a  moment  at  street  corners 
and  over  cottage  gates  when  I  make  one  of  my 
rare  visits  to  the  old  neighbourhood.  Bish  touches 

6 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

his  hat — the  battered  billycock  of  the  past — from 
the  wood-pile  at  Dogkennel,  a  little  greyer  and 
more  stooped  than  of  yore,  his  face  yet  more 
melancholy-lined,  and  we  exchange  hollow  senti- 
ments about  the  season  and  the  crops ;  Liza 
Packham  I  doubtfully  perceive  in  the  roundabout 
mother  of  six  ;  sometimes,  at  garden  parties  whose 
net  has  made  a  wider  sweep,  I  come  across  Mrs. 
Kitty  French  or  Mrs.  Latimer,  shadows  of  what 
I  recollect.  The  General  is  dead,  and  Tomsett 
and  Avery.  Zero's  successor  already  begins  to 
blink  at  me  with  eyes  a  little  misty  in  the  sunlight, 
and  I  think  to  hunt  the  hedges  with  less  furious 
zeal.  Only  old  Lucy,  faithful  still,  but  beginning 
to  fail  a  little,  has  followed  to  the  new  estate. 

There  are  natural  differences  in  the  general 
outlook  upon  our  world  then  and  now.  The 
frenzy  of  haste  and  the  destruction  of  natural 
beauty  continue  at  much  the  old  rate ;  but  I  think 
with  even  less  protest  raised  than  before  :  we  are 
so  far  poorer  as  a  people  that  we  cannot  even 
think  of  affording  ourselves  an  hour  of  clear  leisure, 
or  a  piece  of  unspoiled  country  larger  than  a  deer- 
park.  The  older  graces  of  living  continue  to 
vanish  in  the  natural  progression  ;  the  democratic 
standards  of  decency  and  civility  in  converse,  the 
sense  of  amenity  in  being  have  mechanically  de- 
clined, very  much  as  it  seemed  probable  they 
would  ten  years  ago.  But  the  general  inundation 
which  I  sometimes  apprehended  shows  no  sign  of 

7 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

breaking  over  us  yet ;  it  still  seems  imminent,  to 
certain  kumours ;  but  the  wave  has  now  for  some 
while  hung  above  us  in  a  nodding  fixity,  like  the 
Red  Sea  in  the  old  pictures  of  the  passage  of  the 
Children  of  Israel.  The  blight  of  flat  monotony 
still  spreads  upon  our  world,  beginning  from  the 
schools  ;  but  there  are  energies  of  resistance  and 
sources  of  refreshment  which  I  did  not  sufficiently 
allow  for  in  my  former  estimate.  I  have  come  to 
the  cautious  conclusion  that  in  this  direction  things 
may  last  our  time. 

So  much  for  variety  in  the  matter  of  the  book ; 
I  think  you  will  also  find  differences  in  the  handling 
of  it.  I  have  proposed  to  take  in  a  wider  sweep  of 
the  horizon  with  my  spy-glass  ;  the  doings  of  the 
village  and  the  fields  have  a  more  general  reference 
to  the  needs  of  humanity  and  the  portents  of  the 
time.  You  will  find  a  good  deal  less  about  the 
garden,  and  something  more  about  people  and 
books  than  the  former  work  contained.  Altogether 
I  think  that  those  who,  like  you,  have  once  or 
twice  suggested  a  further  chapter  of  "  Idlehurst " 
will  find  here  something  more  than  a  mere  decant- 
ing of  an  old  vintage  under  a  new  label.  There 
have  been  fresh  gatherings  of  grapes ;  and  if  there 
were  a  few  sour  ones  among  them,  in  these  pre- 
cocious days  a  jar  sealed  down  for  ten  years  has 
quite  a  claim  to  have  digested  its  ranker  humours. 
If  all  prove  flat  in  the  drinking,  as  may  well  be, 
— for  the  grower,  who  has  a  taste  for  the  plump 

8 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

purples  of  his  vine  rows,  is  as  a  rule  a  poor  judge 
of  the  bin — put  it  down  to  bad  seasons,  or  unkindly 
soil,  or  the  influence  of  baleful  comets,  and  do  not 
believe  that  the  thinness  is  due  to  any  dilution 
of  the  old  lees,  or  squeezings  of  remainder  grape- 
skins  in  the  press. 

You  see  that  I  have  been  beforehand  with  a 
variety  of  exceptions,  possible  to  be  taken  by  you 
and  the  critics  which  you  so  kindly  typify  for  me. 
If  these  defences  fail,  I  retire  to  my  impregnable 
hold  ;  the  book  is  a  parergon,  as  all  literature  of 
the  tertiary  rank  and  under  should  be.  Say  it  is 
vapid,  irritatingly  cocksure,  precious,  strains  after 
humour,  meddles  with  matters  above  its  range; 
lay  on  and  spare  not ;  you  do  not  touch  me.  You 
know  all  the  time  that  my  business  is  with  my 
turnips  and  onions,  my  Beurre  pears,  my  pansies 
and  long-tailed  columbines.  The  book  goes  out 
by  itself,  a  sub-product  of  the  spade  and  hoe  :  you 
may  remember  my  old  opinion  that  all  authors 
would  be  the  better  for  an  independence  earned 
among  saladings  and  worts.  For  critics,  too, 
something  of  the  back-bending  discipline  would 
often  be  very  salutary  ;  it  would,  for  one  thing, 
show  them  the  true  place  and  possibilities  of  a 
parergon.  There  is,  in  the  "  Itinera  Phantastica  " 
of  Carbonarius  Secundus,  a  story  of  a  hermit  of 
Lower  Egypt,  who  cultivated  onions  near  his  cell 
by  the  side  of  the  Nile.  He  wrote  a  treatise  on 
the  bulb,  wherein  he  praised  God  for  all  its  virtues 

9 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

of  taste  and  smell  and  comely  proportions  and 
healthful  properties,  and  for  all  the  meanings 
mystically  contained  in  it — its  spherical,  tunicated 
form,  its  aroma,  so  mixed  of  bitter-sweet  that  as 
he  said  he  contemplated  it  SaKpvotv  ytXaaag.  He 
extended  his  thanksgiving  to  ninety-nine  articles, 
and  for  all  his  pains  was  unable  to  excogitate  a 
hundredth  clause.  One  morning  he  woke  to  find 
that  an  angelic  hand  had  filled  in  the  hiatus  in  his 
papyrus  :  he  had  forgotten  to  give  thanks  for  that 
onions  were  made  with  tails  to  hang  them  up  by. 
There  is  a  moral  of  uses  here  which  I  leave  to 
your  apprehension,  though  you  may  never  have 
bunched  your  onions  in  September  sun,  nor  found 
occasion  to  trouble  your  head  to  think  what  devices 
a  man  may  find  in  after-works,  at  the  second  or 
the  third  remove. 


10 


II 


January  I. 

IT  is,  perhaps,  well  for  us  to  be  taken  up  by  the 
roots  and  transplanted  two  or  three  times  in  our 
lives,  as  certain  shrubs  in  nursery-gardens  with  a 
view  to  their  better  standing,  as  gardeners  say, 
the  final  shift.  Though  my  last  remove  was  not 
accomplished  without  some  rending  of  the  stiffened 
fibres,  and  I  think  that  some  part  of  me  was  left 
behind  in  the  familiar  ground,  yet  sooner  than  I 
could  have  fancied  the  wounds  barked  over,  the 
roots  began  to  stir  in  their  new  station,  to  burrow 
and  lay  hold  round  about  them  for  the  anchorage 
and  sustenance  which  must  be  found  if  there  is  to 
be  any  more  leaf  or  flower — fruit,  shall  I  say  ?— 
from  the  old  stock,  as  the  sap  moves  at  the  season. 
In  the  present  case,  the  remove  was  not  to  any 
great  distance,  in  terms  of  space.  In  no  very  long 
walks  I  still  pass  the  old  gate  now  and  then,  and 
sometimes  stop  a  minute  to  look  over  it.  I  have 
not  been  inside  it  since  my  tenancy  ended, 
though  the  house  remains  empty  and  the  garden 
is  fast  going  back  to  wildness.  That  is  all  done 
with  and  put  away  in  its  proper  place.  To  revisit 

ii 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

the  borders  I  planted,  the  rooms  I  grew  to,  except 
in  the  immunity  of  dreams,  those  night-long 
summers  whose  magic  air  brings  all  our  crude 
remembrances  together  to  a  mellow  unity,  would 
be  too  gross  a  confusion.  If  one  must  be  a  ghost, 
disembodied  and  sent  adrift,  this  at  least  remains, 
to  vow  by  Styx  never  to  haunt  and  hang  about 
the  old  domain.  Five  miles  away  from  the  land- 
mark fir-clump  that  for  so  many  years  set  me  my 
course  for  home,  and  still  beckons  sometimes  in 
evening  walks  to  the  indocile  mind,  five  miles  away 
as  the  wood-dove  flies,  is  the  new  quarter  into 
which  I  begin  to  grow — a  narrower  close  and  a 
somewhat  lowlier  roof  than  the  old,  as  befits  the 
shrinkage,  natural  to  the  increase  of  days,  in 
energy  and  in  other  material  of  life.  I  am  again 
on  the  outskirts  of  a  village  :  I  still  enjoy  seclusion 
or  society  at  my  choice.  Sheringham  is  not  half 
so  large  a  place  as  Arnington,  and  is  some  ten 
years  behind  it  in  its  stage  of  growth.  The 
invasion  of  consequential  cottages  and  modest- 
simpering  villas,  which  began  to  overpower  the  old 
rustic  grace  of  Arnington's  looks,  has  hardly 
reached  the  remoter  settlement.  Here  are  also 
larger  remnants  of  the  old  life  and  ways,  excre- 
scences which  so  far  have  escaped  the  jack-plane 
of  Progress.  Above  all  things  the  place  owns  the 
priceless  gift  of  A  CHARACTER,  an  idiosyncrasy 
of  talents  and  humours,  a  proper  twist  in  ways 
of  seeing  and  doing,  differences  other  than  those 

12 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

by  which  its  more  progressive  neighbours  seem 
distinguishable — by  the  possession  of  a  heavier 
rate,  that  is  to  say,  of  a  less  considerable  Parish 
Council,  of  a  more  heatedly  personal  squabble 
over  the  drains.  In  due  time  the  rising  tide  will 
no  doubt  overflow  this  higher  ridge  of  the  vanishing 
shore;  but  meanwhile  here  is  some  dozen  years' 
respite  from  the  crawling  invasion — and  a  dozen 
years  should  suffice  for  a  comfortable  breathing- 
space,  perhaps  even  for  the  achieving  of  projects 
of  several  kinds.  The  lesser  circuit  of  my  bound- 
aries leaves  me  rather  more  leisure  than  I  once 
enjoyed.  I  find  myself  putting  away  my  book 
and  strolling  down  to  the  village  of  a  morning  in 
a  way  which  not  so  long  ago  I  should  have  called 
mere  slacking.  In  the  new  order  of  things — four 
years  still  leaves  it  new  to  a  slow-moulded  tem- 
perament— a  feeling  of  detachment  which  is  an 
old  failing  grows  stronger,  a  sense  of  walking 
about  among  my  kind,  speculant,  aloof.  I  find 
myself,  after  the  change  in  life  that  had  run  un- 
broken into  the  fourth  lustrum,  more  than  ever 
an  onlooker  ;  I  have  no  less  interest  in  my  neigh- 
bours' concerns,  I  hope,  but  I  observe  them  more 
consciously  from  without.  It  is  partly  due  to  this 
contemplative  humour,  perhaps,  that  I  often  end 
my  daily  walks  at  the  church,  and  by  an  estab- 
lished understanding  with  old  Lewry  the  sexton, 
find  my  way  through  the  dark  tower-postern  and 
up  the  rickety  ladders  to  the  belfry.  There 

13 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

among  the  huge  crooked  timbers,  bleached  by 
centuries  of  wind  and  weather,  with  the  bells, 
silent  monsters,  at  rest  in  the  pits  of  their  cage 
beneath  me,  I  lean  on  the  edge  of  the  trefoil 
window,  and  in  a  compendious  bird's-eye  view, 
consider  the  village  spread  out  below.  I  have 
had,  for  as  long  as  I  can  remember,  a  liking  for 
belfries  ;  one  of  my  earliest  heroes  was  Moses 
Branch,  the  little  surly  man  who  kept  spades  and 
mattocks  and  certain  ominous  planking  in  a  dark 
hole  under  the  tower  at  Sandwell,  and  was  master 
of  the  key  of  the  winding  stair,  strewn  with  the  jack- 
daws' litter,  leading  to  the  ringing-chamber  and  the 
giddy  platform  of  the  leads,  whence  one  looked 
breathlessly  between  the  battlements  over  the  flat 
world,  the  dwarfed,  slow-moving  traffic  of  the 
roads,  the  works  of  men,  to  the  lifted  verge  of  the 
hills.  Moses,  I  remember,  dispensed  the  green 
grease  from  the  bearings  of  the  bell-trunnions, 
a  sovereign  remedy  for  the  bad  legs  of  the  parish, 
whose  virtue  lay  as  much,  no  doubt,  in  an  attributed 
sanctity  as  in  its  oxides.  Here,  as  I  clamber  over 
the  frames,  the  clotted  oil  drips  from  the  brasses 
and  soaks  into  the  flooring,  but  no  sexton's  knife 
scrapes  it  now  for  the  needs  of  the  good  women  in 
the  street.  Our  faith,  when  our  legs  are  bad — and 
we  are  a  much-afflicted  race  in  that  way — is  nowa- 
days exercised  on  other,  perhaps  no  less  simple 
medicaments. 

From  this  pinnacle  above  the  common  levels 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

of  mankind,  where  the  swifts  shriek  in  an  ecstasy 
of  play  as  they  whirl  across  the  sun-baked  southern 
face  of  the  tower,  and  the  jackdaws  come  and  go 
upon  their  own  devices  with  jerky  inconsequence, 
I  watch  the  life  of  the  street,  of  the  yards  and 
gardens,  the  suburb  fields,  with  my  instinct  of 
detached  speculation  at  fullest  play.  The  point 
of  observation  has  its  peculiar  influence ;  one  is 
here  at  the  very  heart  of  the  parish,  the  centre 
about  which  it  has  shaped  itself  for  a  thousand 
years.  I  am  in  the  secrets  of  the  clock  which 
rules  the  republic  down  below  ;  the  sudden  stroke 
of  the  hour,  which  sets  a  hundred  labourers  in  the 
fields  to  their  dinners,  or  calls  the  children  in  to 
school,  is  notified  to  me  by  premonitory  clicks 
and  whirrings  of  the  machine  ;  and  visible  tuggings 
of  cranks  and  wires  prepare  me  for  the  uproar  of 
the  halting  chimes  and  the  thunderous  clang  of 
the  tenor,  whose  note,  a  scarcely  heard  vibration 
of  melancholy  sound,  used  at  times  to  reach  me  on 
the  south-west  wind  in  the  garden  under  the  fir- 
clump  at  Idlehurst.  The  great  bell,  whose  crown 
bears  the  legend  PRAIS  GOD.  1601.  still  sounds 
the  knell  to  call  the  tenth  generation  to  their  place 
where  the  headstones  lean  and  weather,  and  the 
unmarked  mounds  sink  to  the  level  of  the  grassy 
plot  below.  The  very  masonry  of  the  belfry  has, 
I  cannot  help  thinking,  a  sort  of  sonority,  that 
answers  the  chance  noises  of  the  street — the  clink 
of  the  smith's  hammer  or  the  rumble  of  the  mill- 

15 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

waggons — with  a  peculiar  retentiveness.  I  like  to 
think  that  this  is  due  to  the  saecular  vibration  of 
the  bells,  a  sympathy  of  matter  acquired  in  the 
course  of  time.  These  ancient  louvre-boards  of 
split  and  hoary  oak  have,  I  assert,  a  timbre  of  their 
own,  absorbed  from  the  million  rounds,  backstroke 
and  handstroke,  that  have  sounded  over  them  to 
the  ears  below — Sunday  chimes,  lulling  slumbrous 
afternoons  in  harvest,  or  blown  in  gusty  syncopa- 
tions through  the  roaring  elms ;  all  the  wedding 
treble-bob  majors ;  the  melancholy  changes  for  the 
old  year,  heard  over  frosty  fields  ;  the  muffled 
peals  for  the  departed  great ;  the  clash  of  the 
"  firing "  for  Trafalgar  or  Waterloo.  The  tower 
has  so  long  spoken  to  the  street,  and  for  the  street, 
that  one  may  well  take  that  material  sympathy 
for  a  probable  opinion,  at  least. 

From  the  height  the  village  lies  spread  like  a 
map  before  me;  the  highroad,  fringed  with  the 
irregular  line  of  comely  cottages  and  self-respecting 
houses  which  make  up  Sheringham  Street,  winds 
away  past  the  gates  of  the  Park,  the  great  house 
half  hidden  in  groves  of  oak  and  fir,  across  the 
wide  stretches  of  heathy  common  lying  to  the 
south,  towards  the  long  wall  of  the  Downs.  The 
street  itself,  embowered  in  old  polled  limes  that 
border  the  wide  grass  verges  on  either  side,  is  still 
sufficiently  rural.  The  line  of  the  houses  is  broken 
by  the  purlieus  of  two  farms,  the  grey  and  green 
squares  of  whose  fields  are  interchanged  with  the 

16 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 


cottage-gardens  and  yards  of  the  hamlet.  There 
are  but  five  or  six  houses  of  the  better  sort — all 
ancient,  with  tiled  or  timbered  fronts,  stone  roofs, 
and  red-brick  towers  of  chimney-stacks — whose 
outward  look  alone  means  security  and  repose. 
The  two  inns,  the  Talbot  and  the  Dolphin,  and 
the  little  beershop,  the  Crocodile,  hang  their  signs 
over  the  short  stretch  of  brick  pavement  which 
marks  the  forum,  the  busy  centre  of  the  commune. 
Close  underneath  the  church  lies  the  Almshouse 
— our  Hospital  of  Saint  Mary  and  Saint  John  in 
Sheringham  of  the  foundation  of  Ralphe  Noyes ; 
its  green  quadrangle,  the  gaping  mouths  of  its 
chimneys,  its  mossed  red  roofs,  its  bell-turret,  its 
gardens,  trim  hedged  and  plotted  out  in  little 
squares  ;  its  wood-yard,  its  Warden's  lodge,  are 
all  laid  out,  neat  and  fine  as  an  architect's  plan, 
before  the  observer's  eyes.  About  the  court  and 
the  gardens  move  the  bent,  slow-pacing  figures  of 
the  almsmen,  or  sit  motionless  an  hour  together 
on  the  benches  under  the  southern  wall.  At  the 
hours  of  the  Rule  the  turret-bell  calls  the  com- 
moners to  Chapel  or  to  Hall ;  and  long  after  the 
parish  clock  has  told  the  hour,  a  slumbrous  note, 
like  a  bell  in  a  dream,  gives  the  little  world  its 
own  time.  Sometimes  from  his  Lodge  comes  the 
Warden,  spare,  erect,  abruptly  moving,  stopping  a 
minute  to  speak  to  one  of  the  bedesmen  at  the 
gate,  and  then  with  raised  hand  and  quickened 
pace  striding  into  the  greater  world.  He  looks 

17  c 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

up  at  the  church  tower  as  he  passes,  to  mark  the 
time,  and  those  piercing  eyes  beneath  the  bushy 
grey  brows,  though  a  hundred  feet  below,  seem 
as  though  they  must  espy  me  in  my  covert  under 
the  shingles  of  the  spire.  He  makes  no  sign,  but 
passes  on  to  the  street,  bound  on  pastoral  errands, 
which  as  locum  tenens  for  the  Vicar  he  has,  during 
the  last  year,  added  to  his  charge  at  the  Hospital. 
During  an  hour's  watch  from  the  belfry  window 
on  a  fine  forenoon  you  shall  see  almost  every 
figure  of  our  commonwealth.  About  twelve  there 
is  a  sort  of  excursus  of  the  gentry  of  the  street. 
The  Misses  Walcot,  the  two  old  ladies  from  The 
Laurels,  take  their  morning  walk  to  the  Post 
Office,  punctual  as  the  sun.  Captain  Prendergast 
fetches  his  newspaper,  and  if  affairs  be  strenuous, 
unfurls  it  there  and  then,  and  reads  as  he  makes 
quarter-deck  turns  up  and  down  the  pavement 
between  the  Dolphin  and  the  Pond.  From  the 
Park  gates,  in  dowdiest  country  things,  to  do 
her  shopping,  walks  Lady  Anne,  whose  ancient 
barouche  and  reverend  greys  were  never  known 
to  appear  before  the  hour  of  the  afternoon  drive. 
A  dashing,  yellow-wheeled  dog-cart  brings  down 
from  Frogswell  Place  Mrs.  Sims-Bigg,  one  of  our 
leaders  of  society  and  a  personage  in  politics,  to 
send  off  her  telegrams  and  meet  her  trains.  And 
now  that  he  is  home  on  leave,  Harry  Mansel,  with 
his  pipe  and  his  dachshund,  saunters  down  to  look 
at  his  mare  at  the  Talbot  stables,  attaching  himself 

18 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

impartially  to  all  he  meets,  Lady  Anne  or  the 
ancient  sisters  of  The  Laurels,  and  visibly  welcome 
to  all. 

At  eleven  o'clock  the  proletariat  drifts  from  the 
hod  or  the  hoe  to  its  morning  beer  ;  the  forge  is 
silent,  the  swish  of  the  cross-cut  ceases  at  the  saw- 
pit.  There  you  may  see,  making  towards  the 
Dolphin,  Tom  Prevett,  our  demagogue,  a  terrible 
Radical  yet  a  very  honest  man,  surly,  pugnacious, 
entirely  trustworthy,  a  tremendous  worker,  putting 
through,  with  a  touch  of  the  heroic  age,  day  by 
day,  year  in  year  out,  the  work  of  three  men  of 
this  degenerate  time.  There  is  Jack  Miles  with 
his  inseparable  lurcher  at  heel,  the  satyr-faced  old 
tatterdemallion  whose  career  of  oddly  mixed  good 
and  bad  ends  in  unredeemed  loafing  about  the 
Dolphin  yard  and  the  slow  soak  of  body  and  soul 
in  "  twopenny."  There  is  Tom  Gates  and  a  dozen 
like  him,  "  only  labourers,"  chance  workers  at  any 
job  that  barely  taxes  hand  or  head :  thriftless, 
aimless,  uncontrolled,  drunk  or  starved  by  the 
chance  of  a  fortnight's  wages  ;  an  interesting  class, 
a  product — a  portent,  some  will  have  it — entirely 
of  our  own  making.  There,  too,  not  yet  grown 
superior  to  the  forenoon  habit  of  his  youth,  is 
Mr.  Alpheus  Myram,  their  master — "employer," 
the  wise  it  call — our  builder,  contractor  and  under- 
taker, a  District  Councillor  and  the  people's  warden, 
a  man  of  views,  who  has  dreams  of  a  future 
for  Sheringham  and  bides  his  time  for  the  fair 

19 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

opportunities  of  local  government  on  the  proper 
scale,  when  we  shall  be  ripe  for  kerbed  concrete 
pavements  and  a  drainage-schems — oh  noun  of 
sagest  meaning !  There  are  other  workers  who 
have  no  eleven  o'clock  recess,  but  are  to  be  seen 
punctual  to  their  hours  the  year  round  ;  old  Abram 
Reed  the  walking  postman,  who  has  done  his 
eighteen  miles  a  day  for  twenty-seven  years, 
shuffles  down  the  road  with  his  wallet  and  sack, 
to  meet  at  the  Crossways  the  higher  official  lately 
promoted  to  a  cart  and  horse.  Elihu  Dean  the 
carrier  brings  his  van  out  of  the  Talbot  yard  and 
begins  to  collect  his  weekly  chaos  of  parcels  and 
errands  for  the  county  town,  all  sorted  in  that 
black  bullet-head  of  his  without  so  much  help  as  a 
pencil-tick  ;  Alf  Tulley  mounts  the  box  of  the 
conveyance  which  calls  itself  totidem  literis,  "  THE 
SHERINGHAM  Buss,"  a  hearse-like  wagonette 
with  a  top  to  it  for  bad  weather,  and  whistling  to 
advertise  the  street,  rouses  his  horses  to  a  walk 
and  departs  for  the  railway  station  and  the  great 
world,  four  sound  miles  away.  The  doctor  comes 
from  the  surgery,  takes  the  reins  and  slashes  the 
kicking  mare  whose  play  has  been  entertaining 
the  street,  and  spins  away  on  his  twenty-mile 
round  of  cases,  the  rich  variety  of  the  country 
practitioner,  amputation  of  a  finger  caught  in  a 
chaff-cutter,  midwifery,  measles,  a  typhoid  outbreak 
at  Manvil's  Green,  the  end  of  one  cancer  case,  and 
the  diagnosis  of  another.  The  Warden,  in  his 

20 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 


pastoral  capacity,  comes  back  from  sick-visiting  in 
Jubilee  Cottages,  making  slow  progress  up  the 
street  with  many  tacks  and  crossings,  pursuing 
and  pursued,  hailing  Mr.  Churchwarden  Myram 
from  the  Dolphin  steps,  or  held  for  five  minutes 
while  Widow  Roser,  curtseying  like  a  clock-work 
toy,  pours  out  her  interminable  complaints  and 
needs.  Tomkins  the  constable  comes  from  the 
cottage  where  the  inscription  COUNTY  POLICE 
hides  among  vine-leaves  and  monthly  roses ;  an 
officer  stout  and  bucolic  of  aspect,  but  very  effectual 
for  good,  in  a  personal  and  paternal  way  not 
perhaps  altogether  contemplated  by  the  regula- 
tions. No  sort  of  justice  has  as  yet  been  done 
to  the  village  policeman  ;  the  difficulties  of  his 
position,  the  importance  of  his  personal  character, 
and  his  influence,  preventive  and  monitory,  in  all 
sorts  of  indirect  ways,  are  still  quite  insufficiently 
recognised. 

Now  all  these  characters,  be  it  observed,  belong 
to  the  village  itself — a  compact  and  well-defined 
area  in  the  midst  of  the  real  solitudes.  Save  on  a 
market-day,  it  is  rarely  that  the  genuine  rustic, 
the  unmistakable  weathered  features  and  uncouth 
figure,  to  say  nothing  of  the  long  leggings,  the 
green  cotton  umbrella,  the  round  frock,  are  seen  in 
Sheringham  Street.  The  division  between  town 
and  country  holds  even  here:  in  its  degree,  the 
difference  is  perhaps  as  sharply  marked  as  in  any 
other  region.  The  two  races  seldom  mix ;  the 

21 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

older  breed  keeps  apart,  but  is  quietly  disappearing 
before  the  new.  We  no  longer  even  see  the  sun- 
bonnet  of  old  Mrs.  Gaston,  which  for  a  time  defied 
the  modern  hats  of  her  peers  in  the  street ;  after 
six  months'  sojourn  with  her  daughter  in  Jubilee 
Cottages,  she  went  back  to  live  by  herself  at 
Beggar's  Bush,  a  mile  from  the  nearest  house. 
She  could  not  afford  to  live  down  in  Sheringham 
Street,  she  said ;  "  you  had  to  pay  for  everything 
you  had  there ; "  there  was  no  windfall  fuel  after 
a  gale,  no  chance  rabbit  from  the  keeper,  no  eggs 
from  the  half-dozen  hens  that  foraged  for  them- 
selves on  the  roadsides,  no  apples  from  the  old 
untended  trees.  Good  reasons  for  going  back  to 
the  wild,  no  doubt ;  yet  one  guesses  at  other 
causes,  to  the  full  as  cogent,  if  not  quite  so  easy 
to  put  into  words.  The  magnetic  attraction  which 
produces  the  Rural  Exodus,  as  the  tag-chewers 
call  it,  has  its  repellent  pole,  and  helps  to  widen 
the  gulf  between  old  and  new  both  ways.  And 
that  exodus  is  not  only  towards  the  large  towns  : 
there  is  a  drift  even  into  such  a  centre  as  our 
village,  which  takes  a  man  from  the  life  of  the 
fields  as  completely  and  irrevocably  as  though  it 
had  stranded  him  in  the  Tower  Hamlets.  There 
is  one  way,  however,  in  which  our  town  and 
country  elements  mix  effectually  enough.  Morn- 
ing and  afternoon  there  goes  up  or  down  the  street 
the  straggling  procession  to  school  and  home 
again.  Loitering  as  only  school-children  can 

22 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

loiter,  loaded  with  baskets,  ancient  umbrellas, 
mother's  marketings,  dragging  with  them  babies 
committed  to  their  charge,  the  rising  race  covers 
its  two,  three,  or  four  miles  a  day  of  field-path 
across  the  swampy  plough,  of  quagmire  lane,  of 
blinding  highroad  dust,  as  chance  and  the  seasons 
provide,  to  and  from  the  factory  of  minds,  that 
they  may  sit  long  hours  on  benches  under  blank 
walls,  droning  in  listless  chorus  half  the  morning, 
and  eat  their  bread-and-dripping  dinner  and  play 
their  marbles  in  the  street.  And  we,  ingenuous 
creatures  that  we  are,  who  think  that  these  matters 
can  be  managed  by  the  sort  of  brains  adapted  for 
Post  Offices  and  Boards  of  Works  ;  who,  when  we 
find  our  codes  and  methods  have  been  entirely 
wrong  for  twenty  years,  allow  ourselves  to  be 
dashed  by  no  base  misgivings  about  our  primordial 
sapience,  but  rescind  and  remodel  with  yet  more 
perfect  certainty  for  the  elimination  of  one  more 
mistake  ;  we,  I  say,  are  justified  in  scratching  our 
heads,  as  I  observe  we  begin  to  do,  and  wondering 
why  the  carefully  selected  syllabus  of  rudiments 
which  the  children  are  to  learn  and  to  be  pre- 
vented from  learning,  should  for  once  result  in  the 
precise  character  it  was  calculated  to  form. 

I  observe  that  my  meditations  in  the  belfry 
have  a  way  of  ending  in  criticism  of  fundamentals. 
Perhaps  the  sense  of  elevation  here,  the  looking 
down — as  one  does  from  some  other  altitudes — on 
the  heads  of  one's  fellows  in  dwarfed  perspective, 

23 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

encourages  the  censorial  twist  of  mind.  It  be- 
comes time  to  descend  and  mix  again  on  the 
levels  with  one's  kind  ;  and  presently,  when  the 
last  of  the  red-cloaked  or  long-legginged  little 
school-people  have  straggled  up  the  street  and 
taken  the  country  way  home  again  by  stile  or 
lane,  I  follow  their  track  to  the  upland  paths  and 
the  wooded  hill,  to  the  beloved  solitude  and  the 
secret  guarded  in  the  silence  of  the  waste  fields. 


Ill 


January  12. 

DURING  the  past  year  I  have  a  good  deal  im- 
proved my  acquaintance  with  my  neighbours,  the 
Miss  Walcots.  This  is  mainly  due  to  the  arrival 
at  The  Laurels  of  Mary  Enderby,  a  friend  of  the 
family  in  the  third  generation,  on  a  visit  which,  the 
wise  heads  of  the  village  declare,  will  last  as  long  as 
the  old  ladies  need  any  looking  after.  Mary  is  one 
of  those  plain,  healthy  women  who  seem  to  have 
been  about  forty  as  long  as  one  can  remember, 
towers  of  strength  in  all  manner  of  domestic 
alarms,  whose  qualities  of  a  certain  useful  hard- 
heartedness  and  a  complete  lack  of  nerves  are 
constantly  in  request  for  the  propping  up  and 
bucklering  of  more  impressionable  people.  She 
happens  to  be  a  very  distant  cousin  of  mine,  some- 
where at  the  farthest  stretch  of  kin  ;  but  the  fibre 
of  the  race  is  tough  and  elastic,  and  traditionally 
responsive  to  such  strains,  and  we  both  acknow- 
ledge our  duty  to  the  family  tree.  Now  and  then 
I  go  to  tea  at  The  Laurels,  and  sometimes  Mary 
comes  up  the  hill  for  strawberries  or  cucumbers  or 
other  seasonable  foison,  and  sometimes  we  meet  in 

25 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

the  village  on   marketing   mornings  and  walk  a 
length  or  two  of  the  pavement  together.     And  so 
I  come  to  know  the  ladies  of  The  Laurels  better 
than  I  had  done  for  a  long  time.     Of  course  I 
knew  the  sisters  by  sight  well  enough,  one  tall  and 
something  masculine,  very  old  indeed,  with  that 
curious  contrast  of  strongly  marked  features  and 
vacant  expression  sometimes  to  be  seen  in  aged 
faces,    and    with    a    manner    whose    unremitting 
courtesy  was  a  little  awful ;  the  other,  white-haired, 
and  with  the  colour  still   clear   in   the  wrinkled 
cheek,  beautiful  not  only  with  the  proper  beauty  of 
old  age,  but  with  a  kind  of  afterglow  of  early  light, 
slight,  still  graceful  in  carriage,  shy,  apt  at  times  to 
be  a  little  fluttered  in  manner.     I  knew  all  the 
oddities  of  character  and   methods  of  the   pair 
which  the  village  looks  upon  with  a  sort  of  pro- 
prietary amusement  not  far  from  pride ;  the  daily 
walk   to   the    post-office    for    letters,   when   Miss 
Louisa,  in  the  belief  that  she  goes   too  fast  for 
Miss  Fanny,  paces  the  pavement  some  three  yards 
in  front  of  her  sister,  neither  more  nor  less  in  their 
half-mile's  excursion  ;   I  had  observed  the  quaint 
habiliments,  the  wardrobe  of  an  older  day,  upon 
which   Miss   Louisa's  taste    engrafts    astonishing 
embellishments  in  the  way  of  bows  and  ribbons  ; 
I  knew  the  ladies'  habit  of  taking  the  air  on  fine 
evenings  between  June  and  September  under  the 
clipped  peacocks  of  the  yew  hedge  in  their  garden 
(a  little  plot  which  is   understood  to   possess  a 

26 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

peculiarly  salubrious  climate,  not  shared  by  any  of 
the  other  back  gardens  on  that  side  of  the  street), 
until  at  a  fixed  moment  of  the  clock  the  damps 
begin  to  rise,  they  retire,  and  the  house  is  locked 
and  shuttered  for  the  night.  I  have  found  them 
doing  their  marketing  at  Peskett's,  the  general 
shop,  while  Mr.  Peskett  matched  their  ribbon  or 
weighed  out  their  groceries  with  a  fine  deference 
not  always  shown  to  far  more  considerable  cus- 
tomers. I  have  heard  old  Hobden,  the  butcher- 
greengrocer,  recognising  the  survivors  of  an  older 
race,  relapse  into  a  dialect  almost  forgotten  in  the 
village,  and  in  the  broader  accent  of  the  country 
forty  years  ago,  commend  to  their  notice  "  a  proper 
mess  o'  peas  ;  dey's  '  Early  Sunrise '  from  my  own 
gar'n,  ladies,"  or  "  a  middlin'  nice  parcel  of  Iron 
pears  what  I've  had  off  dat  Ditchling  party  as 
you'll  rec'lect."  Something  of  the  life  within  doors 
at  The  Laurels  is  also  public  property ;  one 
admires  to  hear  of  the  rules  of  the  household,  the 
inexorable  early  hours  which  ignore  the  seasons, 
the  stringent  economy  which  counts  the  knobs  of 
coal,  and  banishes  cold  with  half-an-hour's  turning 
of  the  mangle,  if  April  make  one  of  its  bitter 
returns  after  the  almanack  date  for  the  last  parlour 
fire.  Such  characteristics  as  these  I  have  long 
known  and  honoured  as  distinctions  which  help  to 
give  our  village  its  mark  of  outstanding  personality 
amid  the  grey  monotony  steadily  spreading  over 
the  lower  levels  hereabouts.  My  closer  acquaintance 

27 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

with  the  garden-walk  and  the  parlour  at  The 
Laurels  since  Mary  Enderby's  arrival  has  filled  in 
for  me  the  outline  of  well-marked  character  mainly, 
but  not  wholly,  in  the  way  I  had  surmised.  There 
is,  I  find,  at  least  one  very  solid  ground  of  agree- 
ment between  the  sisters,  in  the  religion  of  putting 
by  all  that  can  be  spared  from  the  slender  accounts 
in  order  that  they  may  do  their  duty  to  the  family 
estate,  and  that  a  few  hundreds  the  more  may  go 
to  swell  the  half-million  or  so  of  the  head  of  the 
house,  a  sporting  Yorkshire  squire  whom  they  have 
never  seen.  On  most  other  subjects  there  is  room 
for  difference.  "They  manage  to  fratch  a  little 
now  and  then,"  says  Mary  Enderby,  herself  a 
Yorkshire  woman.  Miss  Louisa  was  always  the 
clever  one  of  the  family,  the  manager,  the  fighter 
when  need  was.  She  upholds  an  ancient  standard 
of  propriety  which  the  village  admires,  but  scarcely 
emulates.  Miss  Fanny  is  altogether  of  gentler 
mould  ;  her  face,  as  I  have  said,  is  beautiful,  spite 
of  worn  eyes  and  fallen  mouth  ;  at  times  one  sees 
in  it  something  more  than  beauty  in  the  customary 
sense — a  softening  of  expression  as  towards  entire 
rest,  the  tenderness  which  sometimes  comes  to 
people  who  have  not  been  fortunate,  yet  have  kept 
their  thoughts  kind.  The  elder  sister's  features,  as 
far  as  I  have  seen,  are  set  and  fixed — a  mask 
without  the  light  of  eyes. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  Miss  Louisa  was  always 
the  clever  one.     Miss  Fanny  was,  I  should  judge, 

28 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

never  of  too  accurate  memory  or  consequent 
reason,  and  she  has  had  to  give  way  all  her  life  to 
the  superior  mind.  She  has  not  yet  wholly  learned 
to  recognise  her  place,  and  still  contends  for  her 
poor  tumbled  recollections  and  loose-ended  argu- 
ments ;  but  perhaps  more  from  long  habit  than 
from  any  thought  of  ever  having  her  own  way. 
It  may  be  that  Miss  Louisa's  rigid  accuracy  is, 
after  all,  a  kind  of  prop  or  stay  against  which  Miss 
Fanny  has  leaned  ever  since  school-days,  and 
that  if  by  any  chance  the  prop  were  to  give  way, 
the  infallible  head  be  proved  for  once  irrefragably 
wrong,  the  result  might  be  disastrous.  We  talk, 
says  Mary  Enderby,  of  second  childhood ;  but 
some  folk  have  but  one.  The  sisters  have  scarcely 
altered  that  standing  and  regard  towards  each 
other  which  their  difference  of  four  or  five  summers 
gave  them  when  they  left  the  school-room  seventy 
years  ago. 

I  pay  calls  at  The  Laurels  much  oftener  than  I 
should  have  ventured  to  do  before  the  coming  of 
Mary  Enderby :  the  breach  that  was  made  in  the 
walls  to  admit  her  has  never  been  fully  closed  up 
against  the  world  again.  One  drenched  evening 
of  late  I  found  the  ladies  by  the  parlour  fire,  a 
cheerful  blaze  which  had  been  made,  I  understood, 
for  the  benefit  of  the  chair-covers  and  the  books, 
and  so  could  be  enjoyed  with  a  tolerable  con- 
science. As  summer  wanes,  the  taking  of  the  air 
under  the  yew  hedge  in  the  garden  is  replaced  by 

29 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

a  long  hour  in  the  parlour  before  it  is  dark  enough 
to  condone  the  lighting  of  candles  and  the  settling 
down  to  the  evening's  employ.  As  winter  draws 
on,  and  the  fire  wastes  the  counted  billets  quicker 
and  quicker,  I  understand  that  the  grand  economy 
of  bedtime  is  advanced  more  and  more  upon  the 
silent  hours  in  which  Miss  Fanny  dozes  over  her 
book  and  Miss  Louisa  knits  without  a  pause.  To 
Mary  I  imagine  that  this  early  retirement  is  her 
opening  day ;  when  she  has  seen  the  sisters  safely 
upstairs,  she  makes  her  own  world  for  a  little, 
writes  her  letters,  fetches  down  her  books,  or  flings 
out  for  trudging  walks  about  the  village  lanes. 
She  does  not  seem  to  make  many  new  friends  in 
the  place,  beyond  the  Warden  at  the  Almshouse 
and  his  niece  Molly  Crofts  when  she  is  staying 
here ;  and  I  think  she  is  glad,  in  a  way,  to  see  me 
at  reasonable  intervals,  and  to  talk  out  of  our 
common  stock  of  memories  and  traditions.  She 
has  told  me  that  Miss  Louisa  seems  to  fail  a  little 
of  late :  once  or  twice  there  has  been  some  strange 
fumbling  in  her  recollections,  when  Miss  Fanny 
might  have  carried  her  point  in  the  debate  if  she 
had  not  been  stricken  with  sudden  doubts  and 
remorse  at  the  other's  unwonted  hesitation,  and 
tried  in  a  half-frightened  way  to  prove  that  she 
herself  must  have  been  wrong  all  the  time. 

My  last  visit  interrupted  a  difference  of  opinion 
about  the  wages  of  a  certain  dairymaid  at  the 
old  home,  fifty-something  years  ago,  After  the 

30 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

exchange  of  our  accustomed  sentiments  upon  the 
season  and  the  village  chronicle,  the  argument 
was  resumed,  and  Miss  Louisa  producing  from  a 
marvellously  orderly  bureau  several  bundles  of  old 
housekeeping  books,  proved  conclusively  that  at 
the  time  when  poor  brother  John  died  in  the 
trenches  before  Sebastopol,  and  the  legacy  enabled 
the  household  to  enlarge  its  borders,  Bessy  Chat- 
field  had  come  to  Wallcroft  with  no  character  to 
speak  of,  and  six  pounds  a  year  in  wages.  There 
was  no  sign  of  failure  in  the  way  Miss  Louisa 
conducted  her  case,  nor  in  the  lesson  which,  as  she 
tied  up  the  account  books  with  their  strips  of  list 
and  put  them  back  in  the  drawer,  she  read  to  her 
sister  on  the  virtues  of  exactitude  and  a  methodical 
mind.  Miss  Fanny  took  the  rebuke  almost  as  a 
child  at  lessons  might  have  done,  her  hands  clasped 
nervously  upon  her  book,  and  her  head  with  its 
little  tremulous  motion  stooping  over  them.  My 
cousin  had  shown  signs  of  restiveness  during  Miss 
Louisa's  lecture,  and  presently  pushed  back  her 
chair  with  unnecessary  energy,  upsetting  a  work- 
box  on  the  table,  and  giving  utterance  to  that 
emphatic  Tck  which  on  a  lady's  lips  has  all  the 
virtues  of  an  oath.  After  the  diversion  caused  by 
hunting  for  cotton-reels  in  far  corners  of  the 
parlour,  I  took  my  leave,  receiving  the  formal 
curtseys  and  the  wishes  for  a  pleasant  journey  and 
salubrious  repose  with  which  The  Laurels  speeds  its 
guests.  Mary  came  to  the  door  with  me ;  the  rain  had 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

cleared  and  it  was  a  fine  light  evening ;  but  though 
she  stood  a  moment  on  the  step  and  looked  abroad, 
I  doubt  if  she  observed  the  mild  dusk  or  the  young 
moon.  Her  face  bore  a  thinking  frown,  with  a 
rather  grim  lifting  of  the  lip,  an  expression  which 
would  have  become  Nemesis  about  to  foreclose,  and 
certainly  had  a  look  of  Miss  Louisa.  She  held  out 
her  hand  with  an  abrupt  good  night,  and  went 
back  to  her  charges ;  and  on  my  way  home  I 
thought  of  times  when  I  have  seen  her  face  reflect 
rather  Miss  Fanny's  softened  melancholy,  and 
mused  as  I  went  on  two  sorts  of  destiny,  and 
guessed  at  some  prophylactic  root  of  the  Moly 
tribe  which  found  in  early  days  may  preserve  one's 
features  in  the  pleasanter  cast  of  expression  when 
they  have  grown  too  set  and  stiff  to  change. 


IV 


February  2. 

IT  is  at  this  time  of  year  that  one  comes  to  under- 
stand the  fundamental  charm  of  the  country, 
seeing  it  in  its  bare  elements,  without  the  additions 
of  spring  or  summer  ;  here,  rure  vero  barbaroque, 
the  wonted  walks  about  the  fields  show  what 
power  lies  in  a  keen  moist  wind,  a  muffled  silence 
of  the  woods,  a  grey-blue  distance  fading  into 
formless  mists — a  power  of  unity,  of  resting  force, 
of  fine  searching  air  and  even  breadth  of  light 
which  makes  the  thought  of  streets  every  whit  as 
abhorrent  as  it  is  under  April  hedge-sides.  The 
mind's  contrast  of  this  clear  freshness  with  the 
sounds  and  smells  of  town  is  all  the  more  vivid 
for  the  imagination  of  certain  town-folk  foundered 
in  these  drenched  wood-paths,  halting  with  a  scared 
concern  for  their  boots  in  the  hollows  where  the 
drifted  leaves  half  bridge  over  and  half  conceal 
the  pits  of  water  among  the  churned-up  clay,  in 
the  paths  where  not  so  long  ago  they  disported 
themselves,  in  the  lightest  of  shoe-leather,  with  all 
the  airs  of  holiday  ownership.  It  is  an  easy 
digression,  as  one  pauses  for  a  balanced  stride 

33  D 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

across  some  wider  puddle  in  Plash  Lane,  careful 
of  the  take-off  on  the  poached  edge,  to  think  how 
this  usurpation  of  footpaths  summer-dry,  paying 
no  footing  in  November  mud  or  February  rime, 
figures  the  common  position  of  the  town  intellect 
towards  country  affairs.  The  mind  which  observes 
our  rural  physiology  and  prescribes  for  its  com- 
plaints is  by  a  curious  necessity  the  mind  which 
makes  expeditions  indeed  into  the  wilderness,  but 
has  its  home  in  the  world  of  clubs  and  cabs, 
among  the  fogs  and  the  restaurant-fumes  and  the 
eternal  ground-bass  of  the  traffic.  Such  intellect 
comes  down  to  the  country  with  its  capacious 
butterfly-net  and  its  irresistible  geological  hammer ; 
it  collects  its  specimens  and  returns  to  its  own 
place ;  and  presently  to  us,  wading  dimly  about 
our  Plash  Lanes  in  our  winter  solitude,  arrive  some 
of  the  results  of  the  expedition — new  laws  and 
codes  and  economics,  studies  of  land  and  labour, 
novels  of  rustic  life — which  we  acknowledge  with 
respectful  wonder  as  to  how  it  is  done.  It  is 
clever  beyond  words.  Suppose  that  I,  whose 
centre  is  my  cabbage-plot  and  my  radius  Plash 
Lane,  on  the  strength  of  certain  visits  to  town 
were  to  draw  up  regulations  for  the  housing  of  the 
poor  in  Wandsworth,  or  to  write  a  romance  whose 
chapters  careered  through  Park  Lane,  Capel  Court, 
St.  Stephen's  and  the  Ghetto,  I  doubt  whether,! 
could  manage  to  display  a  grasp  of  facts  or  secure 
a  truth  of  presentment  which  would  appear  at  all 

34 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 


magisterial  to  the  critics  dwelling  within  that 
radius  of  four  miles.  And  so,  with  a  rebellious 
fling  of  the  moral  sense  towards  an  ideal  of  com- 
pensatory advantages,  one  sometimes  feels  that 
the  solitude  traversed,  the  cold-driving  rain  and 
the  quagmire  road  taken  on  their  naked  merits,  the 
mental  dialect  of  the  countryside  learned  for 
twenty  years  without  a  holiday,  ought  to  have 
some  make-weight  gift — intimacy,  one  pretends  to 
one's  self,  some  small  power  of  seeing  the  inside  of 
things,  exemption  from  the  subtle  blight  which 
falls  upon  the  amateur.  But  this  is  not  to  be 
pressed  closely ;  there  is  a  proper  Nemesis  for 
such  aspirations ;  even  that  brief  excursion  into 
speculative  morality  may  suffice  to  land  one  over- 
shoes, where  all  the  reluctant  tracks  converge 
perforce  at  the  stile  into  one  desperate  slough. 

Plash  Lane  ends  at  Burntoak  Farm ;  and  when 
I  come  this  way,  I  usually  face  the  struggle 
through  the  last  and  deepest  morass  of  the  occu- 
pation-road and  the  yard,  wipe  my  boots,  after  a 
preliminary  purgation  on  the  grass-tufts  at  the 
gate,  on  the  birch-broom  cleaner  at  the  side  of 
the  porch,  and  pay  a  visit  to  the  mistress  of  the 
farm. 

It  is  generally  allowed  that  Mrs.  Ventom  is  a 
remarkable  woman.  She  manages  a  large  farm, 
as  farms  go  hereabouts,  incomparably  better  than 
most  of  the  neighbouring  farmers  manage  theirs, 
and  her  talent  for  business  is  looked  up  to  with 

35 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

a  respect  not  far  from  awe.  She  has  been  a 
Guardian  for  a  good  many  years ;  and  there  are 
those  who  say  that  she  can  do  what  she  likes  with 
the  Board.  Her  private  activities  amongst  the 
labourers  and  cottage-folk  about  her  own  holding 
are,  in  method  and  result,  quite  unlike  the  usual 
endeavours  of  our  Ladies  Bountiful.  But  beyond 
all  this,  there  are  personal  qualities  which  make  it 
worth  Plash  Lane  twice  over  to  take  the  settle  by 
the  down-fire,  when  it  is  neither  churning-day  nor 
Board-day,  and  poach  an  hour's  talk  from  a  winter 
afternoon. 

No  one  would  think  Mrs.  Ventom  to  be  sixty- 
five  who  did  not  remember  that  it  is  seventeen 
years  since  she  took  up  the  farm  single-handed  at 
her  husband's  death,  and  knew  that  the  pair  were 
middle-aged  when  they  first  came  to  Burntoak 
from  the  other  side  of  the  county.  The  widow  is 
handsome,  in  a  spare,  strenuous  way ;  has  the  least 
touch  of  grey  in  hair  as  smooth  and  brown  as  a 
thrush's  wing ;  the  expression  of  her  face,  given 
mainly  by  almost  the  clearest  pair  of  eyes  I  have 
ever  seen,  is  one  of  reserved  strength,  wise  with 
the  wisdom  that  is  learned  and  taught.  She  is  apt 
to  be  critical,  with  a  humour  of  drolling  a  little  on 
the  matter  in  hand,  with  occasional  indulgence  to 
motions  of  much-loved  fence,  bearing  ever  so  little 
on  the  foible  of  the  opponent.  The  expression 
which  suits  her  best  is  perhaps  one  that  has 
grown  upon  her  of  late  years,  a  look  of  thinking 

36 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

recollection,  grave  and  wise,  almost  tender  at  times. 
Her  manners  are  of  that  kind  which  people  inex- 
perienced in  a  lapsed  world  sometimes  attribute 
to  duchesses.  Her  father  was  bailiff  on  a  historic 
estate ;  and  a  youth  spent  among  great  people — 
people  who  were  great  some  forty  years  ago — with 
the  "  keeping  of  one's  place  "  as  a  religious  principle 
to  counterbalance  any  of  the  common  penalties  of 
familiarity,  seems  capable  of  producing  a  notable 
sort  of  character — a  race  of  stately  housekeepers 
and  grave  dependents,  of  which  Elia's  Grand- 
mother Field  is  the  type,  and  to  which  our  Mrs. 
Ventom,  whether  talking  round  the  Guardians 
or  standing  over  her  poultry  in  the  Square  on 
Tisfield  market-day,  or  receiving  his  lordship  at 
a  shooting-lunch  at  the  farm,  without  question 
belongs. 

She  rules  her  work-people  with  a  benevolent 
tyranny,  kind  but  very  consistently  just,  of  the 
sort  to  which,  if  the  ingredients  be  but  evenly 
mixed,  the  rustic  mind  almost  always  responds 
generously,  going  back,  it  may  be,  to  inherited 
traditions  of  bond-service,  perhaps  to  conditions 
more  fundamental  still.  The  last  time  I  was  at 
Burntoak,  she  was  considering  the  fate  of  Tom 
Gates,  an  odd-job  man,  excellent  when  sober  for 
heavy  haulage,  for  standing  up  to  the  knees  in 
water  through  a  winter's  day  at  cleaning  ditches, 
for  all  sorts  of  works  where  the  brain  can  go  to 
sleep  comfortably.  As  Tom  is  very  often  drunk, 

37 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

and  when  drunk  is  a  mere  destructive  beast,  he 
would  have  been  turned  off  the  farm  long  ago,  but 
for  the  usual  complication  of  a  wife  and  family. 
We  have  in  the  village  plenty  of  working  men  of 
his  sort,  strong  enough  in  body,  till  the  incessant 
swilling  does  its  work,  too  dull-witted  to  reach 
even  the  lowest  form  of  skilled  labour;  on  the 
whole  perhaps  not  quite  so  intelligent  as,  certainly 
far  less  profitable  to  the  country  than  a  well- 
behaved  cart-horse.  Tom,  owing  to  his  particular 
weakness,  suffers  (in  common  with  not  a  few 
others)  from  inability  to  go  up  ladders,  and  is  thus 
debarred  from  the  several  careers  connected  with 
hods  and  scaffolding.  He  is  meant  for  drains  and 
ditches,  for  the  roughest  navvy-work  with  pick  and 
shovel ;  and  at  this  his  wages,  if  not  interrupted 
by  controllable  accidents,  taken  the  year  round, 
with  allowance  made  for  average  out-of-work 
intervals,  would  easily  suffice  to  keep  him  and  his 
family  comfortably  and  to  leave  something  over 
for  the  club  or  the  savings  bank.  As  it  stands, 
he  hands  over  to  his  wife,  out  of  his  fifteen  shillings 
a  week,  seven,  five,  nothing,  according  to  the 
liberality  of  his  humour ;  the  balance  goes,  almost 
intact,  into  the  till  of  the  Dolphin  and  the  Croco- 
dile. The  first  frosty  week  in  the  winter  which 
stops  ground-work  means  absolute  starvation  in 
the  Gates'  cottage ;  but,  as  Tom  is  quite  aware, 
there  is  a  special  Providence  ready  to  interfere  at 
such  a  pass.  This  way  of  life,  with  an  occasional 

38 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

domestic  broil  or  a  bit  of  a  fight  in  the  street  on 
a  Saturday  night,  would  hardly  serve  to  distinguish 
Tom  amongst  a  dozen  of  his  mates  ;  he  has  other 
characteristics,  such  as  the  keeping  of  a  lurcher, 
a  faithful  beast  that  risks  the  keeper's  barrels  on 
Sunday  mornings  to  get  his  master  the  casual 
rabbit ;  his  language  has  caused  the  neighbours 
in  a  not  too  fastidious  row  to  shut  their  windows 
during  the  dog-days ;  he  has  been  in  jail  twice  for 
assaults.  Naturally,  such  a  workman  does  not 
stay  very  long  at  one  job;  a  day  lost  while  the 
Saturday  booze  is  being  slept  off,  an  abusive  out- 
break at  some  fault  found  in  his  work,  and  Tom 
is  on  the  street  again.  He  has  been  doing  some 
draining  at  Burntoak  and  has  taken  the  oppor- 
tunity to  poach  the  adjoining  coverts  during  the 
dinner-hour;  and  Mrs.  Ventom  holds  her  hand, 
Justice  brought  up  in  her  career,  musing  grimly 
on  the  customary  complication  of  the  hungry 
children  and  the  tight-lipped  wife  in  Jubilee 
Cottages. 

It  is  a  nice  question  ;  because,  of  course,  every 
charitable  penny  which  goes  to  pay  the  old  score 
at  the  baker's,  sets  free  another  for  the  Crocodile 
till.  The  thick-witted  brute  perfectly  appreciates 
the  system  of  lady-visitors,  their  "tickets"  and 
soup-kitchen,  which  enable  him  to  lurch  into  the 
steaming  bar  night  after  night  with  a  clear  con- 
science. And  certainly  the  anaemic  wife  and  the 
five  miserable  children  and  the  new  baby  must  not 

39 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

be  left  without  a  crust  or  a  stick  of  firing  in  the 
house ;  impressionable  people,  discovering  actual 
emptiness  every  way,  have  even  ordered  in  bones 
for  soup  and  a  half-hundred  of  coal.  It  is  a  very 
nice  question  indeed,  and  one  that  ancient  famili- 
arity seems  to  bring  us  no  nearer  solving.  There 
are  the  usual  expedients ;  impounding  the  black- 
guard's wages,  persuading  the  wife  to  throw  herself 
on  the  parish  and  get  her  husband  summoned,  or 
to  apply  for  a  separation.  Mrs.  Ventom  has  tried 
these  and  more  in  her  time ;  but  what  in  the  world 
is  to  be  done  when  there  is  a  capital  traitor  in  the 
camp,  when  Mrs.  Tom,  an  apron-corner  to  her  face 
to  conceal  the  traces  of  a  black  eye,  declares  she 
wishes  she  may  be  in  her  grave  before  she'll  hear 
any  one  say  a  word  against  her  man,  or  lift  a  finger 
to  break  up  that  happy  home,  and  so  slams  the 
door  on  the  black  hearth  and  the  empty  cupboard, 
and  leaves  us  to  work  out  the  problem  for  ourselves  ? 
It  is  not  often  that  the  mistress  of  the  farm  allows 
herself  to  look  beyond  the  corners  of  the  matter 
in  hand  ;  but  the  present  case  being  apparently 
insoluble  in  practice,  she  for  once  indulges  her 
imagination  so  far  as  to  sketch  out  a  fancy  picture 
of  a  reformed  local  government  which  would  make 
the  hopeless  nuisance  a  useful  asset  to  the  nation. 
There  should  be  buildings  and  fields,  she  thinks,  in 
every  parish,  something  between  a  workhouse,  a 
prison,  and  a  lunatic  asylum,  where  Tom  Gates 
and  his  kind  should  be  kept  out  of  mischief  and 

40 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

made  useful,  without  a  penny  of  wages,  fed  and 
kept  plainly  and  healthily,  and  put  out  to  work  in 
gangs  under  an  overseer. 

"  And  punished  if  they  broke  out  or  turned  sulky, 
Mrs.  Ventom  ? " 

"  To  be  sure !  They  should  be  well  whipped  if 
they  misbehaved.  Some  would  have  to  be  chained 
up,  as  a  rule." 

"And  would  you  allow  them  to  marry?"  I 
inquire. 

"Well,  some  of  them  might ;  the  best  ones.  Of 
course,"  she  goes  on,  following  up  with  some 
relish,  I  think,  the  deviations  of  her  unwonted  ex- 
cursion amongst  the  foundations  of  society ;  "  of 
course  there  are  worthless  women,  as  well  as  men, 
and  we  should  have  to  have  places  for  them  too. 
And  it  wouldn't  be  only  for  the  working  classes  ; 
oh  no !  there'd  be  room  for  ever  so  many  others," 
she  goes  on,  in  a  meditative  tone  charged  with 
occurring  instance. 

"And,"  I  suggest,  "I  suppose  after  a  certain 
record  of  good  behaviour  a  man  might  get  his 
discharge,  and  his  full  rights  again  ?  " 

"  Of  course,  if But  the  sort  of  men  I  was 

thinking  of  would  generally  stay  there  for  good. 
And  oh,  the  mercy  it  would  be  to  the  country  and 
to  all  the  decent  people  ! " 

"  But  think,  Mrs.  Ventom ! "  I  interpose,  gravely. 
"  It  would  be  nothing  better  than  slavery.  The 
Greeks  and  Romans  had  just  such  a  state  of  things 

41 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

— workhouses  or  ergastula,  chained  gangs,  whips — 
they  gave  them  some  chances  of  liberty  too ;  are 
we  to  go  back  to  the  dark  ages  of  Plato  and ? " 

"We  needn't  trouble  our  heads  about  those 
days,'1  says  the  philosopher,  coming  back  from 
theory  to  life,  as  the  maid  announces  that  Micah 
wants  to  speak  to  her  about  his  wages,  and  please 
what's  to  be  done  about  the  fence  the  bullocks 
broke  in  the  middle  meadow  ? 

"Their  liberty's  safe  enough  nowadays.  No 
one'll  ever  touch  their  right  to  get  drunk  every  week 
and  starve  their  families,  and  scamp  their  work,  and 
help  to  ruin  the  whole  country." 

"  I  imagine,"  I  said,  "  that  the  calamitous  Tom 
has  a  voice  in  his  country's  counsels  ?  " 

"  Of  course  he  has !  We  have  to  thank  you  for 
that!" 

"  Us  ?     Who  ? "  I  demand. 

"Why,  you  gentlemen  who  arrange  all  these 
things  in  your  clubs  and  committees,  and  take  care 
that  a  brute  like  Tom  Gates  shall  have  his  precious 
say  in  taxing  and  governing  me." 

"  But  I  don't  belong  to  a  single  committee,  and 
I  don't  go  to  my  club  three  times  in  a  year,  and  I 
didn't  even  vote  at  the  last  election.  And  I  am 
really  in  favour  of  female  suffrage — with  certain 
qualifications " 

"  No,  thank  you ! "  says  Mrs.  Ventom,  as  she  sees 
me  out  of  the  porch,  and  I  prepare  to  plunge  into 
the  abysses  of  the  yard.  "  No,  thank  you  !  Keep 

42 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

your  own  responsibilities  to  yourselves.  At  least 
I  can  thank  goodness  that  I  haven't  a  hand  in  all 
the  stupid  mess  we  have  to  live  amongst." 

I  had  picked  my  way  to  an  outcrop  of  the  native 
sand-rock,  which  made  a  sort  of  island  in  the  yard  ; 
and  at  this  speech  I  looked  back,  with  something 
in  the  look,  I  suppose,  which  applied  the  words  to 
the  brown  swamp  about  me.  At  any  rate,  Mrs. 
Ventom  took  it  so,  for  she  laughed  and  shook  her 
head. 

"No,  I'm  not  responsible  for  the  yard  either. 
That's  the  agent ;  he  promised  me  the  stone  to 
mend  it  with  last  year,  and  perhaps  in  another  six 
months  I  shall  get  it.  I've  written  half  a  dozen 
times.  .  .  ." 

"If  you  were  to  see  him,  Mrs.  Ventom,"  I  suggest. 

"Ah,"  she  replies,  "if  I  had  him  in  my  own 
kitchen !  But  do  you  think  I've  got  the  time  to 
go  up  and  find  him  in  London  ?  A  big  estate 
may  be  managed  that  way,  but  not  a  small  farm, 
if  I  know  anything  about  it." 

"  And  plenty  more  besides  small  farms,"  said  I, 
as  I  latched  the  gate  and  struck  out  into  the  road 
again. 


43 


February  14. 

I  MADE  a  long  round  to-day  by  Beggar's  Bush 
and  Nyman's  Corner,  and  came  back  through  the 
village  as  the  light  began  to  fail.  We  had  a  week 
of  dark  weather,  with  a  restless  peevish  wind  just 
on  the  wrong  side  of  west,  which  would  not  let  one 
be ;  but  yesterday  there  were  signs  of  something 
better  behind  it,  and  when  about  sunset  next  day 
the  air  fell  suddenly  to  a  dead  calm,  there  was 
beyond  any  doubt  the  first  touch  of  spring.  Your 
cockney,  who  must  have  spring's  coming  burned 
into  him  by  a  glaring  drought  of  May,  would  have 
hardly  noticed  one  of  the  fine  indications :  the 
breath  of  the  wintered  meadow-grass  coming 
across  the  smell  of  the  dew  on  the  dry  road,  or  of 
the  fresh-turned  mould  in  cottage  gardens ;  a 
subtle  change  since  yesterday  in  the  misty  screen 
of  the  Park  elms  ;  the  new  meaning  in  the  evening 
chorus  of  thrush  and  blackbird.  There  was  a  stir 
of  spring  in  the  street  too  ;  people  were  sauntering 
or  talking  at  cottage  doors,  oblivious  of  the  breath 
of  heaven ;  there  was  a  general  sense  of  content 
and  expansion  of  the  soul,  partly  referable,  no 

44 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

doubt,  to  sensible  promises  of  good  times  coming, 
when  fuel  shall  scarcely  matter,  when  there  shall 
be  full  work  at  the  shop  and  the  yard,  and  the 
baker's  score  shall  be  no  more  a  burden :  but 
mainly,  I  think,  unconscious  ;  as  much  a  matter 
of  instinct  and  as  little  of  calculation  as  the  new 
richness  in  the  concert  of  the  birds.  Every 
creature  responds  to  the  spirit  in  the  air ;  Ben 
the  higgler's  old  pony  hangs  his  head  over  the 
gate  in  drowsy  ease ;  the  black  column  strag- 
gling home  to  the  Park  rookery  across  the  rose 
and  grey  of  the  afterglow  makes  a  mellower 
and  a  less  solicitous  uproar  than  of  late;  the 
school-children  on  their  way  home  fill  the  street 
with  livelier  noise  which  the  mild  influence  of  the 
hour  almost  persuades  me  to  think  a  less  strident 
cacophony  than  on  other  eves. 

As  I  reached  the  top  of  the  village  the  dusk 
began  to  take  a  ruddy  flush  from  the  low  red  in 
the  west ;  it  was  no  direct  light  aloft  on  roof  or 
gables,  but  a  pervading  rosy  air,  a  suffusion  that 
transformed  the  whole  street,  the  church  steeple, 
the  timbered  houses,  the  dark  mould  of  garden 
plots  with  the  snowdrops  under  the  box-bushes, 
the  faces  at  doors,  the  very  cobble  stones  under 
one's  feet.  It  was  one  of  those  times  when  a 
man  slackens  his  pace  as  he  goes,  and  takes  deeper 
breaths,  with  a  half  meaning  of  making  the  most 
of  a  blest  hour.  The  light  was  of  that  kind  which 
puts  the  very  best  construction  upon  the  human 

45 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

faces  it  illuminates ;  and  when  by  the  churchyard 
gate  I  met  Mary  Enderby  coming  across  towards 
the  Almshouse,  I  began  to  myself  a  handsome 
apology  for  having  in  times  past  considered 
"  strong-featured  "  a  sufficient  tribute  to  her 
looks.  I  could  have  wished  to  look  into  the 
rights  of  such  a  transformation ;  but  my  cousin 
would  not  stop  to  talk,  because  she  was  on  her 
way  to  the  Lodge.  Molly  Crofts  had  arrived  that 
afternoon,  and  she  wanted  to  catch  her  before 
dinner.  She  turned  in  to  the  Almshouse  entry, 
and  I  went  on  up  the  street  with  a  feeling  that 
the  bland  Saturnian  promise  of  the  twilight  was 
mainly  accounted  for.  The  coming  of  Miss  Molly 
always  seems,  in  a  quite  disproportionate  way, 
to  tune  us  up,  to  quicken,  so  to  say,  the  tempo 
of  our  accustomed  measures.  I  know  that  the 
Warden  consciously  heaves  off  a  full  ten  years 
of  his  age,  and  sometimes  a  good  deal  more,  when 
Molly  is  with  him.  Here  is  Mary  Enderby  over 
at  the  Lodge  without  loss  of  time,  hardly  stopping 
to  speak  to  one — it  was  not  alone  that  rose- 
twilight  which  so  improved  her  looks.  Do  I  not 
know  that  Harry  Mansel  will  pay  a  call  on  the 
Warden  to-morrow  for  a  certainty?  Shall  I  not 
see  Lady  Anne  stop  the  old  barouche,  and  hammer 
on  the  glass  which  always  sticks,  and  carry  off 
Molly  with  her  on  her  afternoon  round  ?  Once 
more  the  tradesfolk  and  the  cottagers  and  the 
children  will  respond  to  the  charm  wftich  the 

46 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

young  woman  seems  to  carry  with  her  wherever 
she  goes. 

That  charm  is  not  a  matter  for  simple  analysis. 
Molly  is  twenty-three,  and  pretty  with  a  prettiness 
that  depends  a  good  deal  on  lights  and  hours  and 
humours,  and  something  on  a  very  sure  taste  in 
dress ;  her  colour  is  not  quite  so  constant  as  it 
should  be,  and  I  think  there  is  no  feature  of  her 
face  which  a  critic — certainly  not  a  critic  with  an 
Elgin-Marbles  standard  like  mine — would  consider 
more  than  tolerable,  except  her  eyes,  sometimes, 
when  she  looks  at  you ;  and  when  it  comes  to 
eyes,  we  Greek-statue  people  speak  without  book. 
With  that  catholicity  of  taste,  which  in  a  young 
lady  so  often  fills  me  with  envious  wonder,  she 
seems  to  read  somewhat  more  than  her  peers 
generally  do ;  she  is  rather  less  endowed  in  the 
way  of  athletics  than  they.  When  she  is  not  on 
her  holidays — and  these  seem  to  be  chiefly  at 
the  Lodge — she  looks  after  an  ancient  cousin  in 
Wiltshire.  Her  likings — for  dances  and  junket- 
ings, Oxford  eights  and  Canterbury  cricket  weeks  ; 
her  labours  —  conscientious  needleworks  and  a 
weight  of  sponsorial  and  Sunday-school  liabilities 
for  her  small  Wiltshire  rustics,  are  at  the  ordinary 
rate  of  her  kind.  With  a  gift  near  genius  she 
makes  what  I  understand  are  very  spare  resources 
cover  her  visiting  and  her  dressing,  and,  I  fear,  the 
demands  of  two  or  three  charitable  leeches.  I 
have  heard  several  people  call  her  "  poor  Molly," 

47 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

and  the  adjective,  which  in  Mrs.  Sims-Bigg's  mouth 
would  probably  refer  to  the  sort  of  dinner  she  was 
accustomed  to,  has  a  different  meaning  when  it 
comes  from  Lady  Anne.  I  make  no  attempt  to 
analyse  the  subtle  attribute,  to  guess  at  dim  in- 
adequacies or  unlikelihoods  in  a  character  or  a 
career;  but  I  feel  vaguely  that  it  is  just.  What 
shall  be  done  with  you,  Molly,  in  this  ponderous, 
jostling  world,  you  whose  peculiar  gift  is  a  singular 
grace  in  small  things?  If  any  one  ever  lived  to 
show  beyond  all  shadow  of  doubt  how  to  pour  out 
tea,  to  manage  a  train  on  a  staircase,  to  sit  on  the 
hearthrug  and  look  into  the  fire,  to  make  an  un- 
likely petition  to  a  busy  uncle,  it  is  Molly  Crofts. 
If  ever  there  should  be  an  Elgin-gallery  for  such 
graces  as  these,  Molly  would  have  the  throne 
in  it. 

So  far  I  had  got  in  one  of  my  customary  search- 
ing analyses,  when  I  came  all  at  once  at  the 
Crossways  upon  Miss  Molly  herself.  Mary  Enderby 
had  missed  her,  for  she  had  been  foraging  round 
the  village  to  replenish  her  uncle's  starved  larder, 
and  was  on  her  way  back  to  the  Almshouse  with 
two  baskets.  We  stopped  but  a  moment  to  speak, 
as  she  was  hurrying  home  ;  but  in  the  ten  seconds 
or  so  in  which  I  met  her  eyes,  how  my  neatly 
parcelled  analysis  went  to  the  winds,  what  a  full 
revenge  she  took  for  my  cocksure  sorting-out  of  a 
young  woman's  qualities !  The  rose  light  was  almost 
gone  from  the  air,  and  it  was  fast  darkening ;  but 

48 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

there  surely  never  could  be  any  other  hour  so 
fated  to  bring  out  from  beneath  that  mingled 
and  varying  prettiness  the  authentic  sign  of 
mere  beauty.  Whether  it  was  the  effect  of 
the  broad  even  illumination,  or  of  some  deeper 
motion  of  Molly's  spirit  showing  in  her  face,  or 
whether  something  was  owed  to  a  quickening  of 
apprehension  on  my  part,  a  remembering  and 
comparing  power,  it  matters  little  :  I  made 
a  very  whole-hearted  obeisance  to  the  vision 
disclosed. 

I  said  I  hoped  she  had  come  for  a  good  long 
visit,  and  she  smiled  very  delightfully,  and  said 
she  thought  a  fortnight,  and  so  we  took  our 
several  roads ;  and  most  of  the  way  home  I  had 
the  image  of  Molly  before  me.  It  was  not  the 
voice  nor  the  smile  that  stuck  so  in  my  mind, 
though  they  came  back  with  still  renewed 
pleasure.  It  was  a  momentary  meaning  of  her 
face  in  the  failing  light,  and  this  given,  I  think, 
mainly  by  the  eyes,  a  pathetic  grace,  a  vague 
trouble  which  I  have  seen  before,  and  thought  to 
imply  the  first  half-incredulous  pity,  for  one's  self 
and  the  rest,  waking  to  the  meaning  of  the  world. 
It  may  be  that  such  an  attribution  is  only  one  more 
trick  of  an  over-analytic  temper,  putting  the  mean- 
ings of  a  well-worn  philosophy  upon  the  fresh 
charm  of  twenty-three.  I  wish  I  could  be  sure  of 
it.  The  charm  had  power,  spite  of  philosophies, 
to  make  me  stop  ten  minutes  by  the  last  gate  up 

49  E 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

the  hill,  looking  back  into  the  misty  darkness  and 
the  points  of  light  glimmering  out  in  the  valley 
below — musing,  with  a  somewhat  wiser  analysis 
this  time,  I  hope,  on  the  elements,  transient  or 
durable,  which  make  up  the  spell. 


VI 


February  18. 

Now  and  then  in  the  round  of  the  seasons  there 
come  times  when  I  am  inclined  to  admit  the 
possibility  of  compensations  for  an  indoor  exist- 
ence. Such  lapses  from  the  higher  choice  are  not 
unknown  in  November  glooms ;  but  they  are 
commonest  in  February,  when  the  turning  of  the 
year  seems  to  have  come  to  a  stand,  when  the 
forerunners  of  spring  that  had  already  begun  to 
stir  dissemble  their  daring,  the  crocuses  shutting 
their  pale  outsides  close  over  the  deeper  gold 
within  their  cups,  the  blackbird  who  had  sung  for 
a  week  in  the  elm  by  the  gate  moping  with  ruffled 
feathers  about  the  lawn.  There  is  neither  sun  nor 
wind  nor  visible  motion  of  clouds  to  give  the  least 
sign  of  change ;  the  garden  plots  are  grey  with 
rime,  or  half  drowned  in  sludgy  snow,  and  the  last 
pretence  at  preparations  in  the  way  of  stick- 
cutting  or  sorting  of  seeds  has  been  exhausted.  A 
walk,  merely  for  the  sake  of  a  walk,  through  the 
silent,  mist-wrapped  fields  is  apt  to  become  a  too 
mechanic  exercise,  ending  in  half-conscious  count- 
ing of  one's  steps,  and  the  like  dreary  introversions. 

Si 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

At  such  times  as  these  a  tramp  down  to  the 
village,  with  a  fire-lit  room  and  tea-cakes  and 
small  scandal  at  the  end  of  it,  appears  a  thing 
meant  by  Nature  to  bridge  over  her  own  hiatus, 
and  I  set  out  with  a  clear  conscience  for  the 
Almshouse  or  The  Laurels.  The  latter  I  reserve 
for  the  drier  days,  since  the  reception  of  shooting- 
boots  fresh  from  the  lanes  is  a  pang  which  tries  the 
courtesy  of  the  dear  ladies  severely  ;  the  Warden's 
ragged  old  Turkey  carpet,  and  the  muddy  curb  of 
his  fender  feel  my  heels  five  times,  I  fear,  for  once 
that  I  imperil  the  faded  roses  of  Miss  Louisa's 
Axminster.  The  last  time  that  I  went  to  the 
Lodge  I  found  Molly  Crofts  in  command  of  the 
tea-table,  and  had  to  meet  with  the  best  face  I 
could  put  upon  it  the  searching  glance  which  fell 
upon  my  hobnails  as  I  came  into  the  firelight. 
Miss  Molly  pays  a  visit  to  the  Almshouse  two  or 
three  times  in  the  year :  if  the  Warden  believes 
that  he  is  giving  her  a  needful  change  from  being 
mewed  up  in  a  Wiltshire  manor-house,  and  Molly 
knows  that  if  she  didn't  rout  her  uncle  out  now 
and  then  and  put  things  straight  for  him,  he 
would  be  all  mould  and  cobwebs,  why,  no  one 
need  concern  himself  to  disturb  either  belief. 

The  dismal  close  of  day  was  sufficient  warrant 
for  early  drawing  of  curtains  and  stirring  up  of  the 
fire  ;  and  it  was  pleasant  to  see  the  light  come  and 
go  on  the  books  that  cover  the  walls,  on  the  black- 
framed  prints  of  Bishops  and  Heads,  on  the 

52 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

Warden's  pipe-racks  and  littered  papers,  and,  among 
all  the  bachelor  trappings  and  the  paraphernalia  of 
learning,  on  the  crinkled  brown  hair  of  Miss  Molly 
bending  over  the  tea-things.  One  perceived  after 
a  time,  as  men's  way  is,  that  it  was  a  new  set  of 
tea-things,  and  that  there  was  a  jug  of  narcissus 
on  the  writing-table,  and  presently  I  observed  that 
there  was  a  fine  new  woolly  hearthrug,  and  that  the 
old  capacious  sofa  was  set  at  a  new  and  convincing 
angle  to  the  fire.  All  this  tended  to  a  feeling  of 
not  uncomfortable  luxury,  heightened  by  the 
thought  of  muddy  lanes,  by  the  sound  of  the  drip 
from  the  trees  outside  in  the  dark  and  formless 
night ;  but  when  I  said  something  in  this  sense,  I 
found  Molly  in  a  contrary  humour  and  inclined  to 
disown  her  improvements.  We  were  much  too 
luxurious  ;  why  should  we  have  all  these  things, 
while  there  were  people  close  by  us  who  hardly 
knew  how  to  live  ?  She  had  been,  I  found,  into 
some  of  the  cottages  in  Jubilee  Row  during  the 
afternoon,  and  had  found  the  Gates  and  Oram 
households  without  either  bread  or  firing ;  the 
husbands  had  been  out  of  work  through  half  the 
winter,  and  Mrs.  Oram's  ninth  infant  had  the 
croup.  And  on  her  way  home  Molly  must  have 
met  with  a  tramp  whom  I  had  come  upon  half- 
way up  the  hill  as  I  walked  down  to  the  village,  a 
ragged,  half-starved  creature  with  one  foot  out  of 
his  boot,  and  his  miserable  pretence  of  a  bunch  of 
laces  in  his  rheumatic  fingers :  the  man  was  a 

53 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

monument  of  wet  and  cold  wretchedness,  too 
beaten  to  beg,  save  by  mechanically  presenting  his 
wares  as  we  met  in  the  road.  And  so  Molly 
frowns  as  she  looks  at  the  fire,  and  gives  us  our 
tea  as  it  were  under  protest,  and  compares  the  lots 
of  men,  and  is,  I  think,  for  the  time  very  sincerely 
sick  at  heart  and  angry. 

It  seemed  that  the  Warden  had  met  with  the 
tramp  on  his  way  home  from  his  rounds,  and  had 
walked  with  him  from  Ball's  Cross  to  the  Park. 
"  He  was  a  wretched  object  to  look  at,"  he  says  ; 
"  but  I  came  to  the  conclusion  that  on  the  whole 
he  was  about  as  well  off  as  I  am,  reckoning  one 
thing  with  another." 

Molly  looked  worlds  at  her  uncle ;  but  all  she 
said  was — 

"  And  you  did  nothing  for  him  ?  " 

"  Not  at  all,"  he  answered  ;  "  I  gave  him  six- 
pence." 

u  Gave  him  sixpence !  "  cries  Molly,  who  has 
stringent  ideas  of  her  own  about  charity  and 
"relief."  "  Of  course  he'll  spend  it  on  beer  at  the 
first  public-house  he  comes  to  ! " 

"I'd  have  given  it  him  for  morphia,  my  dear," 
replied  the  Warden,  "  if  I  thought  he'd  have  used 
it.  Suppose  that  he  is  in  the  Lion  at  Nyman's 
Corner  now,  and  has  had  his  sixpennyworth,  he 
will  be  one  of  the  happiest  men  in  Sheringham 
parish— far  happier  than  we  are  in  thinking  about 
him." 

54 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

Molly  taps  the  floor  with  her  foot.  "  As  if  you 
didn't  know  that  I  didn't  mean  happiness  of  that 
sort!" 

"But,  my  dear,  if  you  begin  to  classify  and 
qualify  happiness,  as  moral  or  otherwise,  and  so 
forth,  we  shall  get  into  all  sorts  of  tangles. 
Talking  merely  about  comparative  pleasure  and 
pain  in  people's  lives,  you  will  find,  if  you  look 
into  things,  that  there  is  a  curious  balance  or 
equality;  much  more  than  most  people  imagine. 
We  aren't  all  organised  alike,  for  one  thing :  that 
poor  devil  doesn't  feel  the  cold  and  wet  as  you 
or  I  would  after  we'd  done  ten  miles  on  the  road 
from  Tisfield  Workhouse.  That's  his  gain,  the 
rougher  fibre :  and  my  loss  is  that  I  can't  make 
myself  glorious  with  sixpennyworth  of  bad  beer. 
When  we  talk  about  all  men  being  equal  in  the 
sight  of  Heaven,  I  never  can  make  out  why  we 
tie  the  words  down  to  one  meaning  out  of  about 
half  a  dozen,  as  if  there  were  not  compensations 
everywhere" 

Molly  only  shakes  her  head,  and  has  nothing  to 
say  to  such  a  shocking  hypothesis.  But  the 
Warden  is  launched  on  his  subject,  and  turns  to 
me,  as  one  already  broken  in  to  the  theory,  and 
perhaps  too  little  apt  to  shy  at  a  paradox.  It 
was  the  question  of  the  equality  of  human  happi- 
ness which  first  led  him  to  look  into  the  whole 
matter  of  the  compensatory  hypothesis.  He  made 
Molly  fetch  him  Sir  Thomas  Browne's  "  Christian 

55 


LQNEWOOD   CORNER 

Morals "  and  La  Rochefoucauld,  and  read  us  two 
places — 

"There  may  be  no  such  vast  chasm  or  gulph 
between  disparities  as  common  measures  deter- 
mine," and — 

"Quelque  difference  qui  paroisse  entre  les  for- 
tunes, il  y  a  neanmoins  une  certaine  compensation 
de  biens  et  de  maux  qui  les  rend  egales." 

The  texts  were  not  unknown  to  me,  and  I  once 
showed  the  Warden  a  passage  almost  in  the  same 
terms,  but  less  peremptory,  in  my  own  La 
Bruyere ;  but  like  a  wise  man  he  prefers  his  own 
quarrying.  Everybody,  he  says,  admits  the  exist- 
ence of  set-offs  and  drawbacks ;  it  is  easy  enough 
to  remember  that  a  fine-natured  man  has  keener 
pleasures  and  deeper  pains  than  a  blunt-edged 
one  ;  that  learning  and  sorrow  increase  together ; 
that  children  are  hostages  to  fortune ;  and  all  the 
rest  of  the  tags :  but  few  people  take  the  trouble 
to  observe  the  actual  balancings  of  loss  and  gain 
in  historical  characters,  or  among  their  own  folk. 
And  nobody  follows  the  admission  to  its  logical 
conclusion ;  it  would  be  too  nearly  an  admission 
of  a  governing  intelligence  for  the  schools  in  power 
just  now.  If  any  one  cares  to  follow  out  the 
idea  in  other  directions,  he  will  find  the  balance 
kept  everywhere.  Look,  at  the  present  time,  at 
the  increase  of  the  power  of  scientific  observation, 
coupled  with  the  decay  of  connective  reasoning. 
We  can  afford  to  smile  at  the  old  men's  facts  ; 

56 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

but  they  would  have  made  short  work  of  our 
logic.  It  is  not  a  mere  accidental  change,  but  a 
necessary  connection  of  cause  and  effect ;  exactly 
as  lenses  gain  in  penetration,  they  lose  in  field 
and  in  the  power  of  keeping  several  planes  in 
focus. 

I  came  in  here  with  an  instance  in  which  I  hold 
the  Warden's  theory  to  be  absolutely  true ;  the 
disappearance  of  the  arts  before  the  advance  of 
the  thing  which  nine  people  out  of  ten  mean  when 
they  talk  about  "  science."  We  are  really  a  little 
too  greedy,  and  want  everything  at  once ;  we 
build,  when  we  build  seriously,  with  steel  instead 
of  stone,  but  we  would  like  to  think  our  new 
cathedrals  as  good  as  Salisbury ;  we  have  invented 
coal-tar  dyes,  but  we  grudge  the  fourteenth  century 
its  coloured  glass;  we'll  have  our  process-blocks, 
and  etch  like  Rembrandt  too.  The  Warden  ac- 
cepts my  little  contribution  to  the  theory,  and 
tacks  it  on  to  his  own  position  about  literature. 
We  have  made  applied  mechanics  the  business  of 
the  human  soul ;  and  then  we  are  puzzled  to  know 
why  we  don't  produce  bigger  poets  than,  let  us 
say  ...  eh  ?  That  case  is  pretty  obvious  ;  poets 
are  not  like  the  stained-glass  people ;  we  see  the 
scarcity  all  right,  but  we  think  it's  only  a  tem- 
porary accident.  Who's  the  man  who  said  the 
reason  why  we  had  no  great  poets  was  because 
we  could  do  without  them  ?  But  to  think  of 
"  science,"  of  all  things,  ignoring  the  fact  that 

57 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

everything  has  to  be  paid  for,  to  the  last  grain 
and  farthing !  The  scientific  people  don't  see  yet 
that  you  can't  fill  hollows  without  taking  down 
heights ;  they  actually  talk  about  "  levelling  up  " 
and  "  levelling  down "  as  if  the  two  could  be 
separated.  And  the  social  economy  folk  are  for 
raising  the  conditions  and  enlarging  the  sphere  and 
increasing  the  comfort,  as  if  they  had  anything 
but  the  old  world  to  draw  on  for  supplies :  they 
might  as  well  try  to  create  matter ! 

Molly,  who  had  retired  behind  the  defence  of 
parish  needlework,  looks  up  at  last  from  her 
fairy-fine  seam,  and  breaks  in  upon  her  uncle's 
conclusion  with — 

"Well,  we  don't  burn  witches  now,  nor  behead 
our  enemies,  or  put  them  on  the  rack,  anyhow. 
And  I  won't  believe  we  aren't  happier  than  when 
they  did  things  like  that !  " 

"But  I  don't  know,  Molly,"  says  the  Warden, 
"  that  they  would  have  thought  our  blissful  state 
of  things  a  good  exchange  for  their  own  way  of 
doing  things.  I  can't  help  thinking  they'd  have 
found  us  horribly  dull  and  lethargic  ;  they'd  have 
kicked  at  our  red-tape,  I'm  sure.  They  wouldn't 
have  stood  our  placid  oppressions  and  impersonal 
frauds,  and  the  tangles  of  interest  we  lose  ourselves 
in  whenever  we  try  to  give  a  knock  to  the  re- 
sponsible folk.  Take  a  thing  like  that  open  drain 
at  Tillman's  Green,  that  goes  on  just  the  same  as 
ever,  spite  of  all  I've  written  and  said  about  it: 

58 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

to  begin  with,  they'd  too  strong  stomachs  to  bother 
about  a  bit  of  a  smell,  and  if  they  had  thought 
about  it,  they  would  rather  somebody  should  be 
whacked  or  racked  than  let  a  whole  parish  be 
poisoned  half  their  lives.  I  wouldn't  go  into  history 
for  comparisons,  if  I  were  you,  Molly ;  keep  to  our 
own  times,  and  think  out  what  is  to  be  said  for  and 
against  being  rich  and  poor,  for  instance — for  being 
Mrs.  Sims-Bigg,  suppose,  or — well — Molly  Crofts. 
Think  out  the  advantages  of  being  young  and 
quite  old.  Put  one's  degenerate  mouthful  of  teeth 
against  the  pleasure  of  having  them  out  under 
gas  ;  or  Mrs.  Yarborough-Greenhalgh's  At  Homes 
against  the  ties  of  civilised  society ;  try  simple 
set-offs  and  comparisons  like  that,  Molly." 

Any  rejoinder  that  Molly  might  have  intended 
was  prevented  by  the  arrival  of  Harry  Mansel, 
late  from  a  ride.  His  well-spattered  leggings 
received,  I  fancied,  a  less  searching  scrutiny  than 
had  fallen  to  the  lot  of  my  boots,  although  the 
lamp  was  brought  in  at  his  entry ;  and  he  was 
settled  by  the  fire  with  a  fresh  brew  of  tea,  and 
crumpets  all  to  himself.  The  conversation  split 
itself  in  two,  in  the  way  of  congruity  ;  Molly  had 
to  attend  to  the  tea-things  again,  and  the  Warden 
had  to  fetch  for  himself  the  books  he  wanted  to 
illustrate  the  great  Theory  in  its  dealings  with  the 
philosophy  of  history.  As  the  pursuit  of  Suetonius, 
astray  on  the  top  shelves,  was  a  matter  of  some 
time,  I  was  able  to  follow  pretty  well — though  the 

59 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

forms  and  syntax  have  naturally  altered  somewhat 
from  those  of  my  own  time — the  talk  that  went  on 
by  the  fireside.  I  take  it  as  a  very  distinguished 
testimonial  that  Harry  Mansel  allows  my  status  as 
a  possible  person.  I  have  known  him  since  he 
was  a  very  small  boy  indeed,  and  the  under- 
standing which  we  came  to  at  our  first  acquaint- 
ance has  stood  the  shock  since  then  of  battles 
and  many  seas,  and  the  wearing  of  the  world. 
It  is  no  small  score  for  a  middle-aged  person  to 
have  a  boy  in  his  first  year  at  Winchester  coming 
over  in  the  holidays  to  talk  inexhaustibly  of  the 
affairs  of  life,  not  translating  or  making  self- 
conscious  allowances  for  the  elderly  outsider,  but 
treating  him,  one  thinks,  almost  as  an  equal,  with 
the  full  vernacular  and  technics  of  the  career ;  it 
is  nothing  less  to  have  the  boy,  a  Captain  in  a 
Gurkha  regiment,  coming  in  on  his  leaves  from  the 
Hills,  as  though  neither  time  nor  length  of  earth 
could  make  any  difference,  to  talk  in  the  old 
friendly  way,  not  only  unspoiled,  but  apparently 
unchanged  by  the  sights  and  hearings  of  his  large 
world.  Harry  was  born  at  Meerut,  and  has  all  the 
happy  address  which  seems  rarely  to  fail  Indian 
children  ;  in  him  the  half-alien  grace  has  stiffened 
into  a  very  pleasant  sort  of  manhood.  He  has 
still  a  good  deal  of  an  early  simplicity ;  he  is  not 
too  clever ;  he  has  a  touch  of  wholesome  insularity, 
a  wise  phlegm  which  keeps  him  unperturbed 
amongst  all  outlandish  distractions  and  lures.  I 

60 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

heard  Molly  ask  him  how  it  felt  getting  back  to 
the  Hills  after  England.  Harry's  last  leave  was 
decidedly  a  full  and  a  gay  one,  including  slices  of 
the  season  in  London  and  Dublin,  with  a  Leve*e, 
Goodwood,  Henley,  Cowes,  and  a  fortnight  on  the 
moors  ;  but  I  don't  think  that  Molly — who  reads 
Mr.  Kipling  and  has  learned  in  the  school  of  our 
latter-day  empirics  the  proper  relation  of  the  part 
and  the  whole — I  don't  think  she  quite  expected 
him  to  answer  that  it  was  all  right,  only  everything 
there  felt  so  petty  and  small  after  being  at  home. 
I  once  asked  him,  after  he  had  come  home  on  one 
of  his  long  leaves,  through  China,  Japan,  and  the 
States,  how  the  fair  of  other  lands  moved  him  ; 
and  he  said  that  when  he  got  home  he  felt  like 
taking  off  his  hat  to  half  the  girls  he  saw  in  the 
streets,  and  thanking  them  for  looking  so  un- 
utterably jolly.  To  stay-at-home  folk  like  myself, 
who  spite  of  ourselves  half  believe  the  assertion  of 
knowing  people  that  we  can't  understand  anything 
about  our  own  country  unless  we  go  out  of  it,  this 
sort  of  testimonial  should  have  an  inspiriting 
effect. 

The  Warden,  though  above  measure  a  book- 
man, has  (thanks,  perhaps,  to  the  great  Theory) 
the  saving  sense  to  see  that  there  are  certain  fine 
qualities  rarely  to  be  found  except  in  conjunction 
with  brains  of  the  less  adventurous  type.  He  is 
always  ready  to  take  Harry  and  his  kind  on  their 
own  ground,  and  perhaps  to  fill  up  some  of  his 

61 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

own  empty  corners  out  of  their  collections.  He 
has  told  me  that  he  used  to  meet,  at  College 
breakfasts  with  the  Master,  a  famous  historian 
who,  if  there  chanced  to  be  at  table  two  or  three 
undergraduates  of  the  normal  intellectual  stamp, 
would  keep  his  pearls  to  himself  in  absolute  silence 
through  the  meal.  The  thickest-headed  lad  there, 
says  the  Warden,  could  have  taught  him  some- 
thing which  might  have  made  his  great  History 
a  little  less  of  a  frigid  vacuum  than  it  is.  For 
myself,  I  think  a  certain  catholicity  of  personal 
taste  in  acquaintance,  the  gift  of  being  a  "  good 
conductor  "  of  sympathies,  even  a  kind  of  universal 
menstruum  or  solvent  of  human  nature,  is  one  of 
the  most  desirable  things.  Few  can  be  much 
further  from  this  ideal  than  myself,  yet  even  I  can 
take  pleasure  in  thinking  of  several  people  with 
whom  severally  I  "get  on"  very  well,  the  inter- 
action of  whose  antipathies,  if  they  were  to  be 
brought  into  immediate  contact — the  resultant 
extremes  of  temperature  high  or  low — I  conjecture 
with  some  solicitude.  In  few  things  is  the 
possession  of  a  polygonal  mind  more  profitable 
than  in  this. 

After  a  little,  by  way  of  counter-changing  the 
conversation,  I  left  the  Warden  busy  with  his  re- 
captured Suetonius,  and  asked  Molly  to  play 
something  for  us.  Harry  opened  the  piano  at 
once,  and  the  two  conferred  together  for  some 
time  at  the  music-stand  as  to  what  we  should 

62 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

have.  It  mattered  very  little  that  they  pitched 
upon  some  airs  from  a  musical  comedy  which  they 
had  heard  in  London.  Molly  plays  such  things 
with  a  good  deal  of  spirit,  and  with  Harry 
whistling  the  air  or  humming  the  words  here  and 
there,  and  I  nodding  my  head  to  the  kicking 
rhythm  of  "  Pst !  boys,  you  mustn't  make  a  noise  " 
(or  words  to  that  effect),  and  remembering  old,  old 
songs  whose  tunes  were  so  very  nearly  the  same 
shuffling  of  the  notes  as  this,  the  Warden  was  left 
very  much  to  himself  and  his  cross-references. 
But  after  a  little  I  found  I  was  not  identifying 
myself  with  the  modern  spirit  quite  so  completely 
as  I  had  supposed ;  the  pass-words  had  been 
changed  more  than  I  had  thought  since  my  day. 
I  went  back  to  the  history,  in  which  the  Warden, 
pencil  in  hand,  was  ranging  like  a  keen  pointer 
in  clover,  and  took  up  the  ends  of  the  Theory 
where  I  had  left  them ;  but  having  at  last  traced 
the  reference  which  had  dodged  him  through  half 
a  dozen  indexes,  the  Warden  slammed  down  the 
books  and  came  to  listen  to  the  music.  So  I  found 
myself  left  between  the  two ;  yet  it  was  pleasant 
enough  to  see  through  half-closed  eyes  the  shaded 
light,  the  serene  hearth,  the  rows  of  books, — the 
sober  company  waiting  to  come  in  with  their  silent 
colloquy  when  all  this  cheery  jingle  and  chatter 
was  done.  I  think  we  all  managed,  in  our  several 
ways,  to  forget  the  forlorn  households  in  Jubilee 
Row,  and  the  soaked  tramp  on  the  road  to  the 

63 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

casual  ward.  It  was  only  when  I  turned  out  into 
the  raw  black  night  that  the  universal  Theory 
came  back  to  mind,  and  I  wondered  whether  it 
would  admit  the  possibility,  in  certain  cases,  of 
deferred  payment  of  balances,  either  with  interest 
or  without. 


VII 

March  5. 

THERE  is,  after  all,  nothing  like  the  punctual 
recurrence  of  minor  duties  for  preventing  the 
formation  of  theories  of  life  on  too  large  a  scale, 
the  building  of  inverted  pyramids  in  space.  While 
the  claim,  six  days  out  of  seven,  on  the  virgin  fore- 
noon is  unquestionably  Nym's  walk,  one  is  not 
likely  to  have  many  dreams  about  whistling  the 
world  to  heel.  Nym  prefers  the  fields,  with  all  their 
chances  of  the  hedgerow  jungles,  rat-holes  in  the 
banks,  rabbits  lying  out  on  the  edge  of  the  wood, 
to  the  prosaic  highroad  ;  and  so  at  this  season  we 
tramp  round  the  swampy  pastures  and  scramble 
through  the  shaws,  with  such  observation  of  the 
signs  of  spring,  and  such  chance  reflections  as  our 
devious  wanderings  and  skirmishes  amongst  the 
underwoods  suggest  or  allow.  To-day  we  found 
a  nook  on  the  fringe  of  the  copse  we  call  Wopses- 
boorne — "  Wapsbourne"  is  the  literary  form — which 
shut  out  the  northerly  wind  and  let  in  all  the  sun  ; 
and  there  we  sat  for  half  an  hour,  Nym  content  to 
be  still  for  once,  with  his  nose  on  his  paws,  while 
we  thought  our  thoughts  in  the  lull  and  warm  air 

65  F 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

of  the  shelter.  There  was  nothing  in  the  fields  to 
suggest  spring,  except  the  dusky,  almost  blackish, 
green  of  the  new  grass,  with  glittering  points  and 
edges  where  the  light  struck :  the  larks  sprang  up 
with  a  few  hasty  notes,  and  would  not  mount,  but 
drifted  away  aslant  and  dropped  again  in  a  few 
moments.  Several  times  one  or  two  of  them 
hung  almost  over  my  head  as  I  sat  still,  only  a 
few  yards  away,  and  I  noticed  their  wings,  seen 
at  full  stretch  with  the  sun  shining  through  them ; 
beautiful  translucent  vans  that  gave  the  idea,  not 
of  separate  feathers,  but  of  stretched  tissue,  "  bent " 
like  the  canvas  of  a  sail,  pebble-coloured  or  pale 
fawn-yellow  shading  to  grey;  and  there  came  a 
notion  that  here  was  a  meaning  for  one  of  those 
seeming-otiose  words  in  Homer,  which  one  would 
so  like  to  put  the  colour  to — ravu<rnrr£/ooe — the 
sense  of  tautness,  thinness,  transparence,  as  of 
a  sail  in  sunlight.  (The  authorities,  I  found  when 
I  looked  up  the  word,  allow  at  least  such  a  loop- 
hole for  the  conjecture  as  no  self-respecting  critic 
would  hesitate  to  use.) 

In  the  midst  of  such  ingenious  recreations  as 
these,  I  suddenly  caught  the  sound  of  the  church 
bell,  a  mere  pulse  of  sound  against  the  wind  ;  and 
counting  the  strokes  up  to  twelve  and  over,  I  knew 
that  it  was  "the  knell  going  out,"  and,  by  our 
careful  country  signal-code,  learned  that  old  Jack 
Miles  had  died  since  last  night.  And  then  one 
must  needs  be  a  little  ashamed  at  one's  easy- 

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LONEWOOD  CORNER 

going  etymologic  diversions.  Our  workaday 
life,  with  people  we  know  dying  round  about  us, 
comes  back  and  turns  out  peremptorily  enough 
such  whims  as  what  some  one  once  thought  about 
birds*  wings  by  the  Ionian  sea.  And  so  that 
matter  flits  away,  skim-winged  enough ;  and  the 
burden  of  due  gravity  returns. 

Of  late  Death  has  been  busy  amongst  us,  as 
we  say :  surely  a  quaint  turn,  this,  to  the  inevitable 
personification!  In  a  thinly  peopled  world  like 
ours,  where  we  know  thoroughly  by  face  and 
history  almost  every  neighbour  in  the  surround- 
ing two  square  miles  or  so,  death  is  a  thing 
intimate  and  observed  in  a  way  hardly  to  be 
realised,  I  think,  by  a  town-dweller.  For  the 
most  part  we  possess  a  remarkably  stoical  temper, 
long  become  instinctive,  a  provision  of  Nature,  as 
we  say,  to  enable  us  to  get  through  our  work  duly, 
in  the  absence  of  distractions  found  elsewhere.  1 
was  looking  into  Seneca's  Epistles  a  short  time 
ago,  and  being  struck  by  the  curious  effect  of 
nervous  solicitude  which  those  constant  contemn- 
ings  of  death  produce — a  sort  of  "  damme !  who's 
afraid?"  attitude — I  thought  how  vastly  better 
our  country  people  have  learned  to  manage  it. 
They  seem  to  have  destroyed  the  last  touch  of 
terror  by  mere  matter-of-factness,  looking  at  the 
event  clear-eyed,  bringing  it  down  by  homely 
perception  and  more  than  a  hint  of  the  grotesque. 
They  talk  about  it  without  the  smallest  reserve  or 

67 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

awe ;  there  is  a  deal  of  meaning  in  the  consequence 
of  the  corpse — often  far  beyond  anything  the  live 
man  attained  to — and  in  the  circumstance  of  the 
obsequies.  What  thoughts  may  come  at  the  end 
to  the  spirit  whose  flame  burns  clear  to  the  last 
flicker,  no  one  tells  ;  but  at  the  least  the  method 
serves  to  keep  a  lifetime  free  from  the  disturbance 
of  that  particular  fear,  down  to  the  farthest  step 
which  we  can  follow. 

Last  Sunday,  a  warm,  still  afternoon,  that 
brought  the  snowdrops  fully  out,  and  set  the 
blackbirds  singing,  half  the  parish  was  in  the 
churchyard  to  see  the  funeral  of  Dick  Holman, 
a  solemnity  which  peculiarly  satisfied  the  require- 
ments of  village  interest.  Dick  had  been  a  fresh- 
faced  lad,  somewhat  overgrown,  perhaps,  whom 
we  had  scarcely  missed  from  his  work  of  road- 
mending  before  we  heard  of  blood-spitting  and 
"decline."  Some  sort  of  pathos  touched  the 
public  mind,  I  think :  a  vague  sense  of  destinies 
unaccomplished.  Mary  Bennett,  with  whom  poor 
Dick  had  but  a  month  ago  exchanged  the  pro- 
bationary "  walking-out "  for  a  serious  engagement, 
was  on  the  edge  of  the  throng,  in  a  sort  of  half- 
mourning,  apart  from  the  universal  blacks  of  the 
family,  unauthorised,  but  allowed  by  the  popular 
judgment ;  tearful,  but,  in  measure,  with  alleviating 
consciousness  of  distinction — such  mercies  there  be 
of  consolation.  For  a  time,  no  doubt,  Mary  will 
make  the  pious  pilgrimage  to  the  churchyard, 

68 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

which  is  our  people's  treasured  reason  for  a  Sunday 
afternoon  stroll ;  unostentatiously,  a  little  apart 
from  the  family,  which  she  will,  I  conjecture,  join 
on  the  way  home,  and  be  asked  in  to  tea  with. 
And  presently  there  will  be  Sunday  walkings-out 
again  in  other  directions;  and  so  one  more 
experience  added  to  the  placid  and  common- 
place understanding  of  a  great  fact. 

Two  days  after  Dick's  burying,  Rebecca  Wick- 
ham,  sixty-nine,  with  a  grown-up  family,  living  in 
all  apparent  peace  and  content  with  her  old  man 
at  Dudman's  Cottages,  is  found  head  downwards 
in  ten  feet  of  water  in  her  own  well.  Some  neigh- 
bour early  astir  (Tuesday  is  market  day)  saw  her 
in  her  garden  patch  in  the  first  of  the  dawn — 
"  terrible  cold  morning  it  was,  with  a  smart  frost 
on  the  ground  ;  he  thought  it  was  middling  early 
for  ol*  Mis'  Wickham  to  be  about,  but  it  didn't 
come  into  his  mind  again,  not  till  he  heard  as  how 
she  was  missing."  She  must  have  pushed  back 
the  slide  of  the  well-lid  herself ;  as  much  as  a  man 
could  do,  mostly.  No  one  knows  of  any  reasons  ; 
she  had  been  pretty  bad  with  the  rheumatics,  but 
had  not  much  else  to  complain  of,  by  all  accounts: 
our  cottage-folk  have  not  yet  found  out  that  reason 
of  Seneca's  for  dying  because  of  the  tedium  in 
always  doing  the  same  things;  the  daily  water- 
fetching  and  potato-peeling  don't  seem  to  give 
time  for  such  fancies.  And  the  old  couple  were 
well-to-do,  according  to  the  standards  of  Dudman's 

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LONEWOOD   CORNER 

Cottages.  Strange,  that  the  two  daughters  who 
are  out  in  service  had  been  written  to,  to  get  them 
to  come  home  on  the  very  day  the  mother  was 
drowned.  One  thing  clear — that  she  meant  it ; 
there  was  no  occasion  to  draw  from  the  well  at 
that  hour,  two  pails  from  over-night  standing  full 
in  the  washhouse.  Between  the  discovery  and 
the  inquest,  I  think  the  neighbourhood  lives  in 
guesses  at  the  motive  and  some  sort  of  recon- 
struction of  the  tragedy,  as  near  the  dramatic 
conception,  perhaps,  as  their  minds  ever  reach— 
the  sudden  resolution ;  the  creeping  down  the 
creaking  stairs  so  as  not  to  waken  the  old  man  ; 
the  barefoot  stumble  through  the  frozen  twilight ; 
the  struggle  with  the  rimy  well-lid  ;  the  moment's 
pause  on  the  green-slimed  edge — all  these  imagina- 
tions react  in  a  not  unpleasing  horror ;  and  once 
again  death's  sting  is  soundly  dunted  on  a  solid 
sense  of  the  real. 

And  now,  to  fulfil  the  belief  of  the  parish  that 
deaths  go  in  threes,  the  sullen,  surly  bell  tells  us 
that  old  Jack  Miles  is  gone  at  last ;  and  some  of 
us  will  be  saying  it  is  a  mercy;  and  some  that 
there's  none  to  miss  him  ;  and  the  prophets  who 
have  buried  him  twenty  times  this  year  are  finally 
justified.  Had  he  died  in  his  prime,  Jack  might 
have  had  a  notable  funeral,  for  thirty  years  ago  he 
was  cock  of  the  village,  the  parish  bully,  the 
natural  captain  of  the  wilder  spirits,  famed  beyond 
the  bounds  as  a  man  of  his  hands  and  one  that 

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LONEWOOD   CORNER 

never  skulked  from  the  provocations  of  the  law. 
His  was  a  sounding  youth.      He  fell  in  with   a 
gang  of  the  navvies  who  made  the  first  railway 
through  Sussex  and  did  so  much  to  educate  the 
natives  in  ways  still  to  be  traced.     He  was,  when 
still  a  boy,  one  of  the  famous  band  which  sacked 
the  coverts  of  a  neighbouring  baronet,  after  send- 
ing the  head-keeper  a  written  notice  of  the  coming 
foray.     A  born  ftghter,  he  had  a  full  share  in  the 
battles   which   roused   the   Sunday   calm    of   the 
village  green  ;  he  remembered  as  one  of  the  great 
days  of  his  life  the  opening  of  the  new  railway, 
when  the  countryside  came  in  thousands  as  to  a 
fair,  to  venture  themselves  on  rides  in  open  trucks, 
given  gratis  to  mark  the  day ;  when  the  Bolney 
cherry-orchards   were  stripped  to  heap  the  stalls 
spread  on  both  sides  of  the  line  ;  when  the  after- 
noon was  given  to  the  noble  art,  and  there  were 
eighteen  duly  formed  rings  to  be  seen  at  one  time 
on  the  adjacent  heath.     After  many  a  slip  through 
the  fingers  of  keepers  and  constables  both  Petty 
and    High,   Jack   first   found   himself  in   jail   for 
smashing  a  fine  new  shop  window — the  first  size- 
able plate  glass  ever  seen  in  Sheringham  Street  — 
"  twenty-five  foot  super  all  in  one  piece,"  he  used 
to  say  in  after-days,  with  the  chastened  pride  of  a 
purged  offence,  "  and  not  a  piece  left  as  big  as  two 
fingers."     His  middle  age  was  stormy  and  full  of 
change ;  a  Herculean  lifter  of  sacks  of  flour  and 
sticks   of  timber,  a  prodigious  worker  when  the 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

humour  took  him,  he  managed  to  live  with  a  free 
hand  between  his  outbreaks  and  his  occasional 
puttings-away.  He  took  a  wife,  and  settled  in  a 
lonely  cottage  at  a  lane's  end,  which  appears  as 
"  L  corner "  in  the  maps,  but  in  the  light  of  its 
master's  goings-on  found  a  new  meaning  for  the 
customary  aspirate  of  the  spoken  word.  Not 
at  first  a  drinker  above  the  ordinary,  Jack  soon 
began  to  win  fame  for  a  heroic  capacity  for  ale ; 
the  tale  of  quarts  he  could  hold  at  a  sitting,  his 
feats  for  a  wager,  when  he  would  drink  standing 
on  his  head  in  the  Dolphin,  appal  the  degene- 
rate modern  hearer.  In  those  days  there  was 
sounder,  if  stronger  liquor  to  be  had  than  the 
"brewer's  beer,"  which— like  "baker's  bread  "—is 
still  a  name  of  scorn  among  the  older  men,  and  it 
had  its  natural  antidote  in  the  huge  labours  of 
haytime  and  harvest,  the  moonlight  summer  nights 
through  which  Jack  ranged  the  woods.  He  was 
among  his  other  trades  a  notable  pig-killer ;  and 
whether  the  tramping  the  country  from  farm  to 
farm,  together  with  the  drouthy  influence  popularly 
credited  to  dealings  with  the  insides  of  pigs  were 
the  cause ;  or  whether,  as  most  believed,  it  was 
that  they  broke  the  news  of  his  wife's  death  to 
him  too  sudden-like ;  he  fell  swiftly  to  be  the 
merest  drunkard  in  four  or  five  parishes.  He 
ceased  even  from  his  spasmodic  fits  of  work ;  he 
came  before  the  magistrates  for  endless  disorders 
which  were  very  leniently  regarded  by  no  small 

72 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

section  of  the  community,  and  finally  became  a 
hero  when,  expressing  the  popular  mind,  he  broke 
the  constable's  jaw  with  a  brickbat  when  the 
officer  was  carrying  out  the  new-fangled  regulation 
which  forbade  the  immemorial  Guy  Faux  bonfire 
in  the  middle  of  the  street.  When  he  reappeared 
six  months  afterwards,  there  was  seen  an  astonish- 
ing change ;  he  took  the  pledge,  and  confounded 
the  wise  folk  by  keeping  it  without  a  trip  until  the 
zest  of  watching  for  a  relapse  was  wholly  staled. 
For  eleven  years  he  was  the  prop  and  pride  of  the 
local  temperance  platforms,  an  asset  that  figured 
perennially  in  their  accounts.  He  married  again, 
set  up  a  pony  and  cart,  and  on  that  and  his  wife's 
mangle  lived  in  decent  prosperity,  reminiscent  of 
the  old  black  times  as  from  a  safe  haven,  not 
without  his  own  satisfactions.  It  was  a  point  with 
him  that  howsoever  many  times  he  had  read  the 
deep-cut  "  Go,  and  sin  no  more,"  which  faces  the 
out-going  prisoner  above  the  gateway  of  the  County 
jail,  he  "  never  was  a  theft."  He  held  a  notable 
position  amongst  the  untried  good,  as  one  that 
had  come  back  from  the  Pit,  and  reported  of  it 
much  in  the  sense  of  the  moralists'  conjectures. 
And  then,  with  no  perceptible  cause,  came  back- 
sliding sudden  and  complete ;  the  good  years  are 
wiped  out  in  a  fortnight ;  John  Miles's  name  is 
crossed  off  the  temperance  books,  and  the  cause 
reels  under  the  loss  of  its  standing  instance.  The 
little  carrier's  business  goes ;  the  pony  and  cart 

73 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

go ;  the  wife  and  her  mangle  presently  get  a 
separation-order.  For  a  couple  of  years  old  Jack 
hangs  about  the  Dolphin  yard  ;  a  sodden,  tattered 
old  blackguard,  the  argument  and  pride  of  the 
graceless  haunters  of  the  bar,  as  once  of  the  ladies 
of  the  Primitive  Rechabites.  For  a  time  his  head 
keeps  its  natural  force  amidst  the  ruin.  His 
fighting  instinct  leads  him  to  the  village  green  as 
of  old ;  if  a  degenerate  race  has  sunk  from  the 
prize-ring  to  half-day  cricket  matches,  there  are 
still  open-air  religious  exercises  to  be  confounded 
with  ribald  noises,  and  stump  politicians  of  either 
colour  to  be  put  out  with  interruptions  of  rough 
humour,  couched  in  dialect  of  histrionic  breadth. 
Five  parsons  and  all  their  curates  has  the  repro- 
bate known  ;  and  all  that  their  labours  (together 
with  the  occasional  shepherding  of  the  Primitive 
minister  and  the  Strict  Baptist  "supplies")  have 
managed  to  instil  seems  to  be  a  wavering  doubt 
that  it  may  be  true  about  hell-fire  after  all. 

Old  Jack's  tremendous  constitution  holds  out 
through  pleurisies  and  delirium  tremens  year  by 
year,  against  the  muddy  beer  and  flaming  whisky. 
He  is  tended  by  a  great-niece,  a  prettyish,  hectic 
girl,  who,  with  no  pretence  of  affection,  very  nearly 
kills  herself  in  the  work,  and  receives  from  the 
village  opinion  a  curiously  mixed  testimony,  part 
unwilling  admiration  for  her  sacrifice,  part  indig- 
nation against  the  obstinate  devotion  to  an  office 
"  which  she  hadn't  no  call  to  do."  And  now  the 

74 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

bell  is  going,  and  old  John  affords  a  morality  to 
all  the  thinking  street ;  and  Lou,  the  great-niece, 
will  be  allowing  herself  the  well-earned  reward  of 
choosing  not  unbecoming  black  at  Mrs.  Lewry  the 
dressmaker's ;  and  one  finds  one's  self  wondering — 
the  only  matter  of  doubt  remaining  about  old  Jack's 
affairs,  perhaps — what  will  become  of  "Marker," 
the  one-eyed  lurcher  to  whom  the  dreadful  old 
rapscallion  was  all  the  world. 

It  does  not  need  the  knell  thrice  in  a  week  to 
make  the  world  smack  of  mortality  more  than  it 
did  once  within  no  long  memory.  Without  the 
argument  of  the  final  instance,  one  sees  more  and 
more  easily  the  approaches  and  preparatories  of 
death,  coming  about  us  like  some  grey,  quiet 
lapping  tide,  reaching  up  here  to  sand  and  here  to 
stone,  touching  and  marking,  over-running,  un- 
covering, hiding  again  ;  through  all  counter-motions 
one  feels  the  depth  behind  the  lifting  flow.  To 
change  the  figure,  it  is  natural  enough  that  as  a 
man  grows  older  the  blood  should  chill  more  and 
more  readily  at  the  great  cold  of  space  which  lies 
beyond  the  frail  partition  of  human  needs  and 
daily  works,  of  kindly  air  and  daedal  earth ;  it  is 
perhaps  inevitable  with  men  who  hold  strongly 
to  the  past,  but  have  failed  to  link  themselves 
at  all  closely  with  the  interests  of  the  coming 
generation.  There  are  temperaments  which  lie 
singularly  open  to  this  influence — Charles  Lamb's 
"  poor  snakes  " — to  whom  the  good  world  becomes 

75 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

more  than  they  could  wish  the  sign  of  life,  whose 
humours  shrink  at  physical  cold  and  dark,  and 
respond  to  the  passing  of  a  cloud  or  the  lulling 
of  the  wind  in  a  way  they  would  be  troubled  to 
defend.  To  such  natures  the  motion  of  the  spring 
is  of  course  very  significant ;  it  is  the  forward  lift 
of  the  waves,  on  which  they  let  themselves  go,  to 
hang  on,  like  Ulysses  on  the  Phaeacian  crags,  under 
the  backwash  of  the  "fall."  It  is  the  annual 
miracle  which  should  tune  up  our  religion ;  yet  it 
has  its  own  bitternesses.  The  contrast  of  the 
immemorial  process  with  our  own  decay  is  too 
sharp  at  times ;  it  is  the  primrose  and  the  night- 
ingale which  return,  signs  which  shall  stand  un- 
changed a  thousand  years  after  our  last  April  at 
the  copse  ;  to  lose  our  distinctions  in  the  type 
seems  to  be  beyond  our  reach.  One  may,  when 
the  humour  takes,  find  a  sort  of  calendar  of  loss 
in  the  very  movement  of  the  spring  ;  on  such  a 
day  the  anemones  are  over  for  the  year ;  to-morrow 
the  hawthorn  scatters  along  the  grass.  But  spite 
of  all  such  set-backs,  the  main  purpose  holds,  the 
vis  vivida  pervicit ;  and  the  great  argument  from 
beauty  in  the  world  stands  for  the  time  irre- 
fragable. 

One  side  of  the  little  nook  in  the  wood  where 
I  sat  was  made  by  a  shelf  of  sandstone  rock,  and 
as  the  pulse  of  the  knell  came  dully  on  the  air 
like  a  minute-gun,  I  found  myself  during  my 
meditations  mechanically  counting  the  stratum- 

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LONEWOOD  CORNER 

lines  in  the  stone,  ticking  off  each  stroke  of  the 
bell  against  a  fresh  striation.  And  when  the  mind 
cleared  itself  from  a  certain  hazy  lapse  not  far 
from  oblivion,  I  found  myself  in  possession  of  a 
very  obvious,  yet  little  used  answer  to  some  ugly 
questionings  upon  the  subject  of  Time.  Here  is 
a  man  by  the  Ionian  sea,  who  can  amuse  my 
idle  morning  across  twenty-five  centuries  with  a 
fancy  about  birds'  wings ;  well,  but  suppose  that 
at  length  the  stretch  of  tradition  fails,  that  all  that 
world  is  whelmed  at  last  under  seas  of  black 
forgetfulness,  when,  as  Seneca  says,  the  profound 
of  Time  shall  be  heaped  over  us,  while  here  and 
there  a  greater  mind  shall  lift  itself  above  the 
flood,  and  long  hold  out  against  oblivion,  though 
doomed  to  sink  at  last  into  the  universal  silence. 
Suppose  the  heroic  ages  no  more  than  one  of  these 
knife-edge  layers,  red  or  tawny,  across  the  stone 
by  my  shoulder ;  Homer  himself  no  more  than  a 
fine  shell-fossil  beneath  a  hundred  folds  of  the  silt 
of  being ;  do  we  not  feel  the  strata  already  heavy 
upon  us  ?  feel  the  mortal  cold  of  the  innumerable 
series  of  years  ?  To  such  fancies  the  knell,  counting 
the  laying-down  of  the  courses  of  the  world,  replies 
with  head-clearing,  sober  sense,  and  hints  a  way 
out  of  our  confused  reckoning. 

As  the  tolling  bell,  after  its  melancholy  three 
times  three  and  its  count  of  John  Miles's  years, 
turned  to  a  quicker  stroke,  "  settling "  to  hang 
silent  in  the  belfry  again,  I  got  up  from  the  little 

77 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

nook  beneath  the  rock  and  turned  homewards, 
trying  to  make  a  balky  memory  give  the  right 
words  to  the  sense  of  that  place  in  the  Timaeus — 
one  of  those  sayings  which  seem  to  make  a  strange 
silence  for  themselves  in  the  mind — the  place 
which  calls  Time  the  mobile  image  of  the  Eternal, 
created  together  with  the  heavens,  with  days  and 
nights,  and  months  and  years,  and  past  and  future, 
the  forms  of  Time  which  in  our  forgetfulness  we 
attribute  to  the  eternal  essence.  And  then,  one 
text  linking  on  to  another  as  it  should,  I  remem- 
bered pretty  exactly  that  of  Montaigne  :  "  Dieu 
qui  par  un  seul  maintenant  emplit  le  toujours." 
And  last  there  came  the  rote-learned  words :  "  A 
thousand  years  in  Thy  sight  are  but  as  yesterday," 
which  some  of  us — Lou  the  niece,  and  perhaps  two 
or  three  old  mates,  sad  rogues,  sheepishly  strange 
in  church — will  be  saying  on  Sunday  afternoon, 
when  the  last  of  old  Jack  Miles's  tale  is  told. 


VIII 

March  17. 

To  pass  under  the  archway  of  the  Almshouse 
lodge  is  to  make  an  effectual  retreat  from  the 
hubbub  of  the  world.  The  echoing  passage,  with 
its  vaulted  roof  and  iron-studded  doors,  is  a  sort 
of  ante-chamber  to  the  house  of  peace ;  three  steps 
across  its  worn  flagstones  take  the  worldling  from 
the  noise  and  stir  of  the  street,  the  business  of 
journeyings,  marketings,  politics,  newspapers,  to 
the  haven  where  time  almost  stands  still,  and 
there  is  nothing  to  distract  the  day  between  the 
morning  and  evening  chapel  bells.  To  pace  round 
the  trim  green  square,  to  stop  here  and  there  for 
a  word  with  one  of  the  grey-coated  pensioners  on 
the  benches  under  the  rose-hung  wall,  to  listen  to 
the  old  humours  and  histories  is  a  "  change  "  such 
as  is  not  to  be  found  in  many  a  thousand  miles  of 
travel,  as  men  travel  nowadays,  taking  with  them 
the  small  remnant  of  accustomed  things  which  they 
will  not  find  in  their  caravanserais  and  convoys. 
Under  the  present  dispensation  the  outer  world 
has  hardly  more  entrance  into  the  Warden's  lodg- 
ing than  it  has  into  the  almsmen's  quadrangle. 

79 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

Whether  he  is  to  be  found  in  his  study,  or  in  the 
Green  Parlour,  the  Warden  maintains  unfailingly 
the  charmed  circle  against  the  spirit  of  the  time. 
What  we  call  the  Green  Parlour  is  a  yew  hedge  in 
the  garden,  cunningly  contrived  by  some  old  hancj 
with  curves  and  returns  this  way  and  that  to  catch 
every  chance  of  sun,  and  fence  out  every  peevish 
air :  a  shelter  high  and  thick,  proof  against  all  but 
the  most  villanous  north-easter,  and  roofed  against 
showers  at  one  end  by  the  boughs  of  an  undipped 
yew.  There  are  benches  and  a  stone  table,  and  a 
sort  of  niche  or  aumbry  cut  in  the  live  green,  to 
hold  books  or  other  refreshment.  The  Warden  is 
a  great  man  for  the  open  air,  and,  above  all,  dislikes 
the  superfetation  of  tobacco  within  walls.  I  believe, 
too,  that  he  has  some  theory  about  a  like  redun- 
dancy in  discussion  indoors  ;  at  any  rate,  he  is  to 
be  found  in  one  or  other  of  the  nooks  at  the  proper 
angle  of  the  hedge,  on  most  mornings  when  it  is 
possible  to  smoke  and  read  out-of-doors.  I  found 
him  the  other  day  in  two  minds,  whether  to  stay 
in  the  sunny  corner  or  shift  for  the  first  time  this 
year  to  the  shady  side.  There  was  a  cloudless 
sun,  but  we  had  not  had  enough  of  him  yet,  and 
I  gave  my  vote  for  the  southern  bench.  From 
that  vantage-point  one  looks  across  the  Warden's 
lawn  with  its  steps  and  sundial  to  a  low  stone  wall, 
flourished  with  stonecrop  and  weeds,  and  over 
the  ranges  of  the  almsmen's  garden-plots  to  the 
hayfields  and  hedges,  the  orchards  and  back 

80 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

gardens   that   fringe   the   village   street.     It   is   a 
reposeful  outlook  ;  the  village  life  and  works  are 
scarcely  visible  ;  only  here  and  there  among  the 
trees  the  wood-fire  smoke,  a  clothes-line  fluttering 
its  pennons  across  a  cabbage-patch,  a  figure  moving 
behind  a  gapped  hedge,  guessed  at  by  glimpse  of 
shirt-sleeves   or  apron   as   Mas'   Tingley   or   Em 
Brazier.    But  to  the  accustomed  eye  there  is  parish 
history  to  be  read  in  every  sign.     The  festooned 
napery  signifies  the  return  of  our  friends  the  Sims- 
Biggs  from  town  ;  the  old  grey  pony  out  at  grass 
on  a  market-day  tells  us  that  Ben  the  higgler  is 
still  laid  fast  by  the  rheumatics  ;  and  if  Em  Brazier 
likes  to  bring  out  her  sewing  to  the  bottom  of  her 
mother's  garden-strip,  to  pace  up  and  down  in  the 
sun   and  wind  by  the  elder  hedge,  the  observer 
draws  reasonable  conclusions  from  the  fact   that 
Tom  Lelliot  the  cowman  is  cutting  hay  from  the 
rick  just  over  the  fence.    The  sun  shines  pleasantly 
on  Em's  bare  head  and  Tom's  swarthy  arms,  and 
if  an  occasional  syllable  of  livelier  dalliance  reach 
our  ears   in  the  Green  Parlour,  it  seems,  to  my 
taste,  to  fit   tuneably  enough  to  the  key  of  the 
hour.     To   the    Warden   these    signs   of    life   are 
merely  teasing  details,  if  they  contrive  at  all  to 
make  themselves  felt  by  his  thinking  part.     He 
thanks  God  he  is  not  a  parish  priest ;  this  year  of 
duty  taken  at  a  pinch  will  suffice  for  his  lifetime  in 
that  kind  of  experience.     The  Vicar  will  be  home 
again  in  three  months,  and  then  he  will  leave  the 

81  G 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

work  among  the  cottages,  which  he  was  never 
meant  to  do,  and  will  get  back  to  his  books  and 
fulfil  his  proper  ends.  He  looks  grimly  at  the 
prospect  of  the  fold  which  he  finds  in  such  an 
unlikely  manner  committed  to  his  care,  the 
peaceful-seeming  roofs,  the  orchard-boughs,  the 
comings  and  goings  of  the  sunlit  aureole  on  Em 
Brazier's  giddy  head,  drawing  down  his  brows  in  a 
penthouse  frown,  and  clasping  his  great  thin  hands 
across  his  knee  with  a  nervous  tension.  I  think  I 
can  guess  something  of  his  frame  of  mind — the 
self-contempt  for  failure  trying  to  work  itself  up 
into  a  just  wrath  at  the  putting  of  the  whole  absurd 
business  into  his  unwilling  hands.  I  know  some- 
thing of  other  estimates  of  his  work  ;  I  remember 
the  wish  expressed  a  few  weeks  ago  by  old  Mrs. 
Francis,  a  representative  of  the  more  archaic  ways 
of  thinking,  that  Mr.  Blenkinsopp  wouldn't  come 
back  before  his  lungs  was  properly  mended,  as  he 
had  no  call  to  hurry  home  while  we  had  Dr.  Nowell 
to  look  after  us.  Others  have  hinted  a  sense  of 
Providential  compensations  alleviating  the  Vicar's 
regretted  chest  attack.  I  have  put  this  point  of 
view  before  the  locum  tenenst  but  I  do  not  propose 
to  renew  the  experiment. 

Meanwhile,  the  morning's  visiting  resolutely 
done,  the  Warden  sweeps  away  the  recollection 
of  all  the  infinite  littles  with  a  restless  shift  on 
the  bench,  which  shuts  out  of  his  view  the  house- 
roofs  and  the  garden-patches  and  all  the  visible 

82 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

signs  of  his  flock  and  fold.  He  had  a  letter 
yesterday,  he  tells  me,  from  Blenkinsopp  at  Cape 
Town,  who  by  this  time  is  heading  for  New  Zealand, 
and  so  may  be  said  to  be  on  the  home  stretch ; 
three  months  more,  and  the  temporary  hireling 
will  have  the  parish  off  his  shoulders,  and  will  be 
free  to  settle  down  again  to  collect  materials  for 
the  Philosophy  of  History  on  a  new  plan,  the 
great  theory  of  Compensations  or  Moral  Balance 
of  Power,  whose  decent  carrying-out  and  burial  in 
his  friends'  libraries,  with  an  Athenaum  headstone, 
he  will  have  us  believe,  is  the  remaining  object  of 
his  life.  No  one,  so  far  as  I  can  discover,  has  ever 
seen  anything  of  the  great  work.  Molly  Crofts, 
quoting  a  classic  of  her  youth,  says  it's  all  his 
fancy,  that ;  he  never  writes  anything,  you  know. 
It  must  at  any  rate  be  all  in  his  head,  to  judge 
from  the  way  the  theory  comes  in  pat  upon  all 
sorts  of  subjects  which  one  can  talk  about.  He 
will  just  be  able  to  hold  out,  he  says,  till  the  Vicar 
is  home  again.  It  will  be  high  time  then  for  the 
parish  and  himself  to  get  back  to  their  accustomed 
ways.  I  say  nothing :  but  there  comes  before 
me  the  vision  of  an  old-fashioned,  gentlemanly 
presence,  a  little  over-gracious  and  courtly  in 
manner ;  of  a  daily  walk  as  of  one  whose  religion 
has  lain  chiefly  in  the  avoiding  of  other  people's 
corns,  and  derives  its  strength  to  a  considerable 
extent  from  the  recollection  that  there  was  a 
bishop  in  his  wife's  family.  The  Vicar  must  have 

83 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

been   handsome  as  a  young  man,  and  at  times 
even   now  such  a  cherubic  expression  lights  his 
face,  at  once  infantine  and  paternal,  that  we  forget 
that   recurrent   bishop,  and  the   quondam  curate 
who  was  also  an  Honourable,  and  the  feminine 
entourage  which  feeds  the  dim  mythus  of  a  strong 
heroic  prime   in  a  manufacturing  parish   in   the 
North,  a  cure  which,  but  for  a  change  of  Ministry, 
ought  to  have  brought  the  family  a  second  bishop- 
ric.    His  face  should  be  comely  enough  with  its 
clear  colour  and   shapely  nose   and  white  hair  ; 
but  all  is  spoiled  by  a  terrible  mouth,  slack,  and 
wide,  and  flat-lipped,  of  a  type  which  seems  almost 
distinctive  of  elderly  clerics  of  a  certain  school  and 
standing ;  it  must  be  formed,  one  thinks,  by  the 
lifelong  enunciation  of  platitudes,  and  a  lack  of 
humour  to  turn  up  its  corners.    The  Warden,  with 
his  shaggy  brows  and  hook  nose  is  quaintly  ugly  ; 
but  the   small    thin-lipped    mouth,    mobile   with 
coming  thought,  twitching  in  momentary  smiles, 
lifted  in  sensitive  disgust,  redeems  the   rest.     If 
one  wanted  to  find  a  "  blind  mouth  "  in  the  flesh, 
I   think   that   that   flat-lipped,  well-scraped  type 
would  fit  the  case  very  nearly :  perhaps  the  pattern 
was   known   in   Milton's   day.      And  though  the 
Warden's  tongue  can  be  bitter,  the  cottage  people 
respond  at  once,  as  they  rarely  fail   to  do  when 
they  get  the  chance,  to  live  meaning  and  direct 
reference  to  their  personal  level  and  scale.    Already 
they  begin  to  look  forward  with  somewhat  doubtful 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

understandings  to  the  return  of  the  accustomed 
shepherd  and  the  renewal  of  the  remembered 
pabulum  which  some  call  spiritual,  and  to  which 
some  give  a  Miltonic  and  simpler  sense  of  the 
word.  This  being  so,  it  is  perhaps  only  in  the 
natural  order  of  things  that  the  Warden  should 
be  already  fretting  to  hand  back  the  responsi- 
bilities and  opportunities  of  the  sole  charge  to 
the  absent  priest.  He  was  meant,  he  says,  in 
all  things  to  be  a  spectator,  a  wallflower  at  the 
cosmic  rout ;  any  earlier  motions  towards  joining 
the  dance  have  departed  with  gathering  years.  I 
can  understand  his  feeling,  being  myself  one  of 
those  who,  whether  at  the  solemnity  of  a  sub- 
scription-dance or  in  the  stour  of  party  warfare, 
own  a  centrifugal  tendency  like  that  of  straws  in 
a  water-butt  to  the  periphery.  I  am  with  him, 
too,  when  he  goes  on  to  claim  a  proper  function 
for  the  onlooker,  the  man  in  the  mean  state, 
immune  from  party  contagions  of  the  hour,  free 
from  the  curse  of  impatience  which  will  have  the 
issue  settled  out  of  hand  in  its  own  sense.  We 
itch  to  form  our  great-grandsons'  opinions  for 
them  :  we  want  our  testaments  to  be  of  effect 
without  the  deaths  of  the  testators.  A  thousand 
generations  slipping  on  this  side  and  that  in  a 
fatal  relativity  only  serve  to  make  us  the  surer 
of  our  own  final  capture  of  absolute  truth.  One 
picks  up,  says  the  Warden,  a  half-crown  monthly, 
fresh  and  fine,  smelling  of  printers'  ink  and  of 

85 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

consequence,  and  finds  the  universe  recast  by  a 
dozen  of  ladies  and  gentlemen,  most  of  whom  afford 
an  instance  of  the  inversion  of  the  primary  meanings 
of  language  in  the  word  "  doubt."  Well,  says  the 
Warden,  he  puts  it  all  away,  mentally,  on  a  top 
shelf  for  twenty-five  years,  and  takes  it  down 
again,  at  some  more  searching  spring-cleaning, 
with  black-grimed  edges,  smelling  of  dust  and 
of  impotence.  Were  these  scrambling  lop-sided 
theses  in  detestable  machine-made  English — mere 
flyblows  of  literature — were  they  the  oracles  which 
unsettled  shaky  souls,  and  encouraged  the  esprits 
forts  to  have  another  shy  at  God  ?  Did  these 
writers — the  Dr.  Macgurgles  and  Mrs.  Alethea 
K.  Bangses — persuade  themselves  for  a  minute 
that  this  dead  verbiage,  that  stinks  before  the  year 
is  out,  was  speech  that  counts,  the  haud  mortale 
sonans,  the  fated  body  which  clothes  all  vital 
thought  ?  Did  they  really  overlook  the  eternal 
proportion  between  sound  and  sense  ?  Did  they 
never  perceive  the  curious  effect  of  their  essays 
taken  in  the  mass,  their  collective  value  as  a 
symptom  ?  How  was  it  that  there  never  dawned 
on  them  a  guess  of  the  tremendous  solemnity 
of  the  performance,  the  fatal  unanimous  lack 
of  humour,  the  provincialism,  the  mystery  of 
vulgarity  ?  All  this  made  clear  and  plain,  says 
the  Warden,  "pulveris  exigui  jactu  ;  "  think  of  ten 
years'  dust  on  the  shelf,  and  the  thing  comes  down 
to  its  right  proportions  at  once. 

86 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

I  had  listened  to  the  Warden's  deliverance,  as 
I  have  listened  at  other  times,  waiting  till  it 
should  come  round  to  the  inevitable  master- 
theory,  more  than  half  occupied,  I  think,  with 
the  interlude  going  on  by  the  hedge,  where  the 
conference  of  Em  and  the  cowman  has  certainly 
cost  the  country  half  a  seam  and  a  good  truss 
out  of  the  morning's  work.  Something  else  has 
gone  forward,  no  doubt ;  compensations  even  here 
which  might  be  hitched  into  the  Warden's  scheme, 
if  he  cared  to  look  so  near  his  own  bounds.  He 
is  away  again  amongst  the  trains  of  thought 
suggested  by  those  articles  in  the  bottle-green 
review,  the  ever-clearer  fact  that  there  is  no 
middle  term  in  works  of  the  human  mind  ;  a  thing 
is  either  live  or  dead,  it  has  a  touch  of  Promethean 
fire  or  it  has  not ;  and  if  there  is  one  clear  fact 
in  a  world  of  fog,  it  is  the  visible  seal  of 
authenticity  in  the  manner  of  a  man's  expres- 
sion. Truth  will  not  endure  to  be  told  in  the 
chap-tongue  and  vernacular  of  the  mob:  she 
has  her  mysteries,  her  pass-words  and  signs, 
a  language  of  her  own,  out  of  which  nothing 
was  ever  yet  said  that  mattered  two  days 
together. 

I  could  not  resist  bringing  in  here  my  favourite 
notion  of  the  working  of  that  blessed  sieve  which 
drops  out  all  the  infinite  rubbish  of  letters,  and 
leaves  us — if  we  are  willing  to  stop  at  the  last  hun- 
dred years  or  so — the  absolute  and  unimpeachable 

87 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

good  things  sorted  to  our  hands.  The  Warden 
nods  and  accepts  my  little  contribution  for  what 
it  is  worth ;  when  the  great  new  Philosophy  of 
History,  built  round  the  fundamental  Law  of 
Compensation,  shall  see  the  light,  such  fragments 
will  be  found  ordered  in  their  due  station  in 
the  pile.  But  we  shall  have  to  wait,  for  a 
proper  statement  of  natural  laws  such  as  these, 
till  the  meanest  tyranny  of  thought  ever  known 
comes  to  an  end,  and  an  astoundingly  simple  a 
posteriori  system  comes  down  with  all  the  dead 
weight  heaped  upon  it.  No  chance  of  that  in  our 
time  ?  Every  chance !  says  the  Warden :  the 
thing  has  blown  itself  up  too  fast  to  stand  ;  it  has 
no  roots  under  it,  no  struggles,  no  martyrs.  .  .  . 
The  sense  of  humour  is  not  really  dead  yet  in  the 
world  ;  we  shall  wake  up  some  day  to  see  the 
meaning  of  science  hunting  the  trail  backwards 
and  losing  its  power  of  reasoning  in  exact  pro- 
portion to  its  accumulation  of  facts.  There's  a 
day  of  reckoning  coming  for  the  people  with  bald 
heads  and  grey  side-whiskers,  and  semi-evening 
shirt-fronts,  turn-down  collars,  and  black  bow 
ties,  who  are  called  "thinkers"  by  way  of  dis- 
tinction. 

This  strain  was  not  altogether  new  to  me ;  and 
I  had  been  watching  the  almsmen  in  their  garden- 
plots,  who  when  the  Almshouse  clock  tolled  the 
dinner  hour  at  its  customary  protesting  interval 
after  the  church  chimes,  knocked  off  their  feeble 

88 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

work,  and  began  to  straggle  towards  the  quad- 
rangle. Some  as  they  passed  the  end  of  the  yew 
hedge  looked  towards  us  vacantly,  some  with 
more  or  less  perfunctory  salute,  some  one  or  two 
with  the  ingenuous  grin  of  heartfelt  recognition. 
I  put  it  to  the  Warden  that  he  had  a  body-guard, 
at  any  rate,  to  keep  the  thinking  race  at  their 
distance.  Ay,  he  says,  and  the  best  of  them  all 
is  old  John  Blaker,  who  never  could  read  nor 
write :  and  the  next,  Harding  and  Everest,  who 
have  managed  pretty  well  to  forget  their  learning. 
They  are  certainly  a  great  defence ;  but  even  they 
can't  keep  people  like  Myram  and  Dempster  out 
of  one's  sunshine.  Dempster  is  the  schoolmaster, 
whom  the  Warden  observes  with  lifted  nostril, 
in  a  sort  of  fascinated  horror,  as  one  might 
a  curious  and  pestilent  insect.  Mr.  Myram,  our 
chief  employer  of  labour,  has  all  the  heartbreaking 
virtues  of  his  kind  ;  the  little  man  is  rotundly 
prosperous,  grossly  well-meaning,  a  pillar  of 
Church  and  State,  such  as  our  blind  Samson 
of  the  polls  already  feels  with  twitching  arms. 
Suppose,  the  Warden  says,  that  the  people  who 
manage  our  country  just  now  could  be  made  to 
look  at  Blaker  and  Dempster  together,  and  com- 
pare them  impartially :  he  wonders  whether  even 
their  systems  would  not  yield  to  the  inference. 
Perhaps  not  just  yet,  but  they  will  come  to  sense 
in  time ;  they  are  throwing  over  their  eternal 
principles  much  faster  than  they  did  twenty  years 

89 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

ago.  Some  day  they'll  actually  see  that  a  man's 
real  value  is  not  touched  by  the  three  R's  or  any- 
thing else  poured  into  him  by  Dempster  and  his 
mates.  They'll  put  the  story  of  Theuth  into  their 
Standard  Readers  presently,  and  will  see  that  we 
are  only  worth  what  we  dig  for  ourselves  out  of 
the  stuff  of  life.  And  then,  when  the  abominable 
tyranny  of  the  press  and  print  is  knocked  out, 
there  will  be  wonderful  times.  In  a  thousand 
years  ?  In  a  century !  The  balance  of  things 
is  about  made  up,  and  the  great  year  is  nearly 
due. 

And  there,  the  talk  having  reached  a  familiar 
anchorage,  I  find  it  is  time  to  be  going  home- 
wards. From  the  square  drifts  the  savour  of  the 
old  men's  dinners :  Em  Brazier  has  taken  her 
sewing  indoors,  and  the  honest  cowman  is  working 
with  uncommon  energy  to  fill  up  his  tale  of  trusses, 
making  the  hay-knife  flash  in  the  sun  as  he  digs 
into  the  rick.  The  school-bell  jangles  from  the 
far  end  of  the  village,  and  Mr.  Dempster  is  re- 
suming his  national  function  with  the  ladle  and 
the  jar.  The  world  is  spinning  still,  and  we  must 
needs  renew  our  little  vortices  in  its  wake.  But 
as  I  mount  the  meadow-path  for  home,  I  look 
back  on  the  green  quad  of  the  Almshouse,  saying 
over  to  myself  the  Warden's  Montaigne  text  over 
his  study  fireplace:  "J'essaye  de  soustraire  ce 
coing  a  la  tempeste  publique/comme  je  fais  un 
autre  coing  en  mon  dme;**  and  once  more  I 

90 


£&+y~<*c~ti*- 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

commend  the  spectatorial  attitude,  the  taste  for 
standing-out,  setting  one's  back  to  the  containing 
wall  of  things,  and  giving  one's  eyes  their  chance, 
at  least,  of  seeing  something  of  the  course  of 
time. 


IX 


April  15. 

IT  is  perhaps  part  of  a  backward-looking  idio- 
syncrasy that  in  dreams  I  so  often  return  to  old 
neighbourhoods.  I  do  not  mean  the  re-enacting 
of  the  past  on  the  remembered  scene,  which  I 
suppose  is  one  of  the  commonest  shapes  of  dream- 
ing ;  but  the  wilful  returning  as  an  alien  to  revisit 
the  places  of  twenty,  thirty  years  ago,  the  mind 
quite  conscious  of  the  changes  but  at  the  same 
time  somehow  forgetting  the  space  between.  In 
waking  hours  it  is  almost  a  religion  with  me  to 
avoid  the  crossing  of  old  paths  and  the  opening 
of  closed  doors  ;  but  that  odd  half-brother  self  of 
dreams  has  no  such  scruples.  Most  of  all  in  these 
visitations  do  I  explore  the  gardens  which  I  have 
left  behind  me  :  very  rarely  a  shadowy  Idlehurst ; 
sometimes  the  shore  of  Sandwell  dimly  figured 
through  the  early  mists  ;  oftenest  the  domain 
abandoned  in  the  middle  years,  when  the  lesion 
of  exile  seldom  quite  heals.  In  almost  every  case 
the  garden  sleeps  In  a  rich  air  of  content,  and  I 
pace  about  the  walks,  mostly  busy  with  one  occu- 
pation, the  choosing  of  plants  or  roses — ghosts  of 

92 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

authentic  possessions,  most  of  these,  but  sometimes 
the  mere  extravagance  of  fabulous  plenty — to  be 
transported  to  the  new  ground  which  exists,  in 
some  serene  confusion  of  ownership,  together  with 
the  old. 

These  imaginations  sometimes  hold  on  even  into 
the  daylight  musings,  and  the  plan  and  lie  of  an 
earlier  domain  at  times  almost  blot  out  the  material 
beds  and  paths  amongst  which  I  walk.  At  its 
own  hours  the  recollection  comes,  making  nothing 
of  the  actual  garden  or  the  prospect  beyond  its 
bounds.  Nine  times  out  of  ten  it  is  of  a  corner  of 
Surrey,  half  suburban  in  the  sense  the  word  still 
bore  some  forty  years  ago  ;  of  spaces  of  lawn 
larger  than  the  chain  would  have  accounted  them, 
shadowed  by  a  cedar,  a  pair  of  great  elms,  the 
relics  of  older  state,  shut  in  from  the  highway  dust 
by  a  thicket  of  a  hundred  neighbour  shrubberies 
and  orchards,  and  by  some  remainders  of  wild 
wood — a  purplish  mist  of  boughs,  thickening  down 
the  hillside  in  the  spring  suns,  with  here  a  pink 
cloud  of  almond  blossom,  and  here  a  gap  of  April 
blue.  The  actual  garden  of  the  present  hour  is  a 
steeply  falling  patch  half  converted  from  kitchen 
to  flower  quarters,  fenced  with  a  stubby  quickset 
hedge,  beyond  which  lie  a  slope  of  meadows,  the 
river-valley,  the  spire  and  the  tops  of  the  village, 
the  wooded  ridges  of  the  Weald,  and  for  horizon 
the  long  grey  wall  of  the  Downs.  To  tell  the 
truth,  the  landscape  overpowers  the  garden  j  it  is 

93 


LONEWOOD    CORNER 

only  in  the  full  height  of  summer  that  the  sun- 
flowers and  hollyhocks  and  peas  wall  out  some- 
thing of  the  prospect,  and  give  the  plot  a  chance 
of  being  considered  on  its  own  merits.  At  other 
seasons  the  enclosure  is  too  evidently  a  mere  clear- 
ing carved  out  of  the  wilderness,  and  held  as  an 
outpost  with  constant  watch  and  ward  against  the 
recurrent  forces,  the  ceaseless  invasion  of  weeds 
and  wildings,  of  birds  and  beasts  that  claim  their 
free-warren  of  the  old  forest  and  something  more. 
In  that  warfare  on  my  lonely  height  I  sometimes 
think  with  a  rebellious  sense  of  comparison  of 
other  closes  which  I  have  known,  safe  shut  in  high 
walls,  down  among  the  neighbourly  ways  of  men, 
where  neither  bramble  nor  dock,  mole  nor  rabbit 
profanes  the  ground.  Still,  it  is  something  to 
maintain  one's  post,  spite  of  chaffinch  and  leather- 
coat  and  brown  mouse ;  there  is  the  long  path 
and  the  cross  path  and  the  middle  path  for  one's 
walks  and  meditations,  with  worts  and  flowers 
doing  reasonably  well  in  the  brown  loam,  and  the 
noble  landscape  broad-spread  before  one's  eyes.  It 
should  not  be  easy  for  a  man  to  become  morbidly 
introspective  with  half  the  county  in  his  view, 
and  the  village  sounds  coming  up  on  the  wind  to 
suggest  the  busy  concerns  which  thrive  just  below 
the  hill ;  the  war  with  the  wild  things  keeps  a 
strenuous  mind  in  use  and  prevents  the  obese 
luxury  known  in  securer  places,  where  man  is  cor- 
rupted with  peach-houses  and  terraces  and  pleached 

94 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

arbours  and  vast  gooseberries  guarded  under  an 
acre  of  netting.  Here  the  furniture  of  the  garden 
does  not  encourage  a  fastidious  temper ;  there  is — 
to  say  nothing  of  marbles  or  fountains — hardly  so 
much  as  a  box-edging  or  a  yew-hedge:  there  is 
no  definite  sign  of  antiquity,  except  the  four  tall 
weather-scarred  firs  beside  the  house,  and  they 
signify,  if  anything,  the  original  heathy  wildness 
of  the  hillside.  The  house  itself,  low  and  irregular, 
a  patching  of  new  on  old,  hiding  its  rough-cast 
and  tile  under  a  cloak  of  greenery  where  the 
conquering  ivy  grows  year  by  year  upon  the  roses 
and  honeysuckle,  lends  no  state  to  the  scene ;  it 
is  little  more  than  the  hut  for  the  sentinel  who 
keeps  his  rounds  here  season  by  season  against  the 
restless  besiegers  and  the  still  sap  of  time.  There 
is  but  one  short  length  of  wall  in  the  whole  garden 
— barely  enough  for  a  Noblesse  and  a  Lamarque — 
and  under  it  the  cucumber  frames,  and  the  early 
border  face  the  south.  Here  is  a  fine  place  for 
look-out  and  reflection  in  all  seasons  when  we  do 
not  hold  the  sun  too  cheap.  Last  week  I  spent 
a  whole  morning  in  it,  on  one  of  those  spring  days 
which  we  call,  with  perfectly  right  instinct,  old- 
fashioned — no  mere  negative  truce  with  dogged 
east  winds  or  seasonable  hailstorms,  but  a  blest 
positive  in  light  and  warmth  and  colour,  which 
seemed  almost  too  good  to  be  true,  and  even  went 
near  to  out-facing  a  dozen  of  the  days  of  old, 
secure  as  they  seemed  in  their  prescription  of 

95 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

memory.  On  that  one  day,  cuckoo,  nightingale, 
and  swallow  came  together,  nearly  a  week  before 
their  time :  all  growing  things — from  the  elm-buds 
by  the  gate  to  the  seed-leaves  peeping  in  the 
borders — had  come  on  with  a  sudden  stride  since 
the  night  before.  I  had  proposed  sundry  jobs  of 
repotting  and  pricking  out,  with  the  lights  wide  to 
the  mild  air,  but  it  soon  came  to  sitting  on  the 
edge  of  the  frame,  and  considering. 

There  was  enough  to  think  about  in  the  visible 
world  ;  the  cloud-shadows  trailing  up  the  hillsides, 
while  the  woods  gloomed  to  a  massy  purple  or  the 
meadows  flushed  from  green  to  gold,  should  have 
been  sufficient  matter  for  a  reasonable  man.  The 
rim  of  the  Downs,  that  quarter-inch  strip  of  pale 
violet  air  set  over  the  strong  painting  of  the  middle 
distance,  inasmuch  as  we  know  it  to  mean  the  five 
hundred  feet  of  chalk  hill,  the  steep  grassy  scarp  of 
the  fortress-wall  on  whose  outer  face  the  Channel 
breaks,  dominates  the  whole  picture.  To-day  the 
horizon  wears  a  soft  purplish  blue  like  a  flower's  ; 
to-morrow — if  the  present  signs  hold  good — it  will 
show  a  film  of  grey  haze,  the  edge,  to  a  sufficiently 
keen  eyesight,  engrailed  with  a  running  ripple  of 
heat.  In  days  when  the  air  is  dead  still  and  clear 
for  coming  rain,  the  Down  seems  to  come  close  up 
to  the  garden  bounds,  a  dun-green  bank,  hard- 
edged  and  massive,  showing  every  plane  in  relief, 
making  out  every  gorse-tuft  and  chalkpit  and 
white  track  up  the  Beacon,  and  the  dusty  ploughed 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

fields  on  its  flanks.  Add  to  these  differences  the 
effects  of  storm,  of  snow,  of  sunset  on  the  hills, 
and  a  man  might  be  content  to  take  such  a  horizon 
for  his  park-pale,  even  for  his  prison-wall,  if  it  must 
be.  And  if  he  should  fret  even  at  that  limit,  there 
is  the  freedom  of  the  sky,  the  "  flammantia  mcenia 
mundi,"  which  shut  no  one  in ;  there  is  the 
inscrutable  economy  of  the  cloud-world,  its  mar- 
shallings  and  goings  to  and  fro  upon  the  business 
of  the  earth,  its  serene  purposes  and  vast  unity  of 
intent.  There  is  a  good  deal  to  be  said  for  the 
man  who  of  choice  or  necessity  makes  himself  the 
fixed  pole  of  his  sphere  and  lets  the  vault  with  its 
vapours  and  meteors  revolve  about  him. 

On  that  old-fashioned  April  day  I  spoke  of,  the 
clouds  were  drawing  out  of  the  south,  tall-sided 
argosies  in  lines  and  squadrons,  here  and  there 
one  of  the  dark  keels  unloading  her  treasure  in 
drifting  streaks  upon  the  shining  plain.  Presently 
one  of  the  great  galleons  came  driving  over  the 
valley ;  one  moment  her  tops  towered  dazzlingly 
in  the  blue  overhead  ;  the  next,  the  gloom  and  the 
rattling  shower  were  upon  us.  I  took  shelter 
under  the  old  yew  behind  the  frame-ground  ;  and 
while  I  waited  for  the  sun,  which  I  could  guess  at  by 
a  whitening  gleam  across  the  rain,  I  rummaged  over 
some  corners  of  recollection — a  confused  store,  safe 
bind,  yet  anything  but  safe  find — which  often 
affords  good  hunting  in  idler  intervals.  I  tried  to 
recover  something  of  the  frame  of  mind  in  which 

97  H 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

as  a  boy  I  used  to  receive  the  coming  of  spring. 
I  am  inclined  to  think  that  to-day  my  pleasure  in 
the  shows  of  the  seasons  is  stronger  than  with  most 
middle-aged  people,  more  direct  and  less  associa- 
tive ;  at  any  rate,  I  spend  a  good  deal  more  time 
than  most  of  my  acquaintance  in  doing  nothing  in 
the  open  air :  yet  the  best  of  to-day's  pleasure  is 
the  merest  shadow  of  the  expectancy,  the  obse- 
quious watching,  the  revel  of  the  fulfilment  of  the 
opening  year,  which  I  knew  before  I  was  twenty. 
It  seems  wonderful,  now,  to  think  how  little  served 
to  kindle  the  fire  ;  some  still  noon,  sweet  with  the 
lilacs  in  a  forecourt  at  Casehorton,  or  Sandwell 
glittering  through  his  weed-channels  across 
meadow-levels,  was  enough  to  put  the  fever  into 
the  blood.  One  spring  of  all  was  the  crowning 
time;  one  that  seems,  as  I  look  back  from  this 
dispassionate  distance,  to  have  had  no  black  days, 
no  wintry  returns,  to  have  been  altogether  made 
up  of  such  weather  as  this  morning's  hasty  glory. 
Such  suns  shone  then,  and  leaves  budded  in  such 
heats  and  such  bland  airs  as  time  can  scarcely 
afford  twice  in  seventy  years.  It  is,  I  think,  a 
special  good  fortune  of  mine  that  this  annus 
mirabilis  is  mixed  in  memory  with  the  thought  of 
school-days.  By  some  odd  choice  of  the  associative 
power  the  holiday  outbreaks,  the  day-long  rambles 
in  Surrey  roughs  or  chalk-hills,  the  fishing  expedi- 
tions by  Sandwell,  have  lost  a  great  part  of  the 
magic  impress,  and  rank  with  the  ordinary  good 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

hours  of  other  years  ;  the  moments  which  still 
hold  the  incommunicable  light  were  spent  in 
morning  school  at  Dr.  Ransome's.  The  Doctor 
himself,  no  doubt,  had  something  to  do  with  it. 
There  is  no  finer  poetic  justice  in  the  world,  and 
not  much  neater  science,  than  the  schoolboy's  gift 
of  sticking  a  fatal  criticism — perhaps  no  more  than 
a  nickname  with  an  irretrievable  barb — into  the 
one  loose  joint  of  the  magisterial  harness  ;  but  I 
remember  no  failing  we  could  fasten  on,  unless  it 
were  a  disproportionate  mending  of  quill  pens,  a 
daily  repair  done  with  a  relish  of  conscious  art, 
which  began  with  sharpening  the  penknife  on  the 
binding  of  the  great  Facciolati  while  the  Doctor 
read  the  morning  Psalms  to  himself  and  we  looked 
up  our  Livy  or  Euripides.  We  had  our  encounters 
now  and  then  ;  but  the  fundamental  warfare  of 
pedagogy,  with  its  occasional  awkward  truces,  was 
in  our  case  inverted.  We  knew  that  our  Doctor 
was  on  our  side  ;  we  felt  that  he  had  not  forgotten 
what  it  is  to  be  a  boy,  had  not  taken  that  draught 
of  Lethe  without  which,  under  the  present  con- 
stitution of  things,  schoolmastering  seems  barely 
possible.  One  understands  now  what  at  times 
perplexed  us  then — his  sudden  attention  to  a 
venturesome  rendering,  after  a  bare  patience 
with  the  decent  dictionary  work.  Spite  of  the 
way — almost  like  conjuring — in  which  he  got 
meaning  out  of  the  seeming-nonsense  chorus-lines, 
there  were  times  when  he  went  back,  as  I  judge,  to 

99 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

his  own  first  wrestlings,  and  we  felt  that  at  bottom 
they  were  nonsense,  after  all.  I  remember,  in  an 
odd  way  he  had  of  making  a  sort  of  musing 
excursus  on  our  construes,  as  much  to  himself  as 
to  us,  his  contempt  for  that  place  in  the  De  Senectute 
which  disparages  the  desire  to  recall  childhood  and 
youth  in  later  age.  In  his  own  temper  he  had 
kept  the  sense,  at  least,  of  the  early  secret ;  this 
rarest  gift  of  memory  was  the  lien  between  us,  a 
main  part  of  the  spell  which  fashioned  those  good 
recollections  at  school.  There  was  also  something 
in  the  place  and  the  manner  of  it.  The  garden 
was  the  schoolroom  all  through  a  time  of  seraphic 
summer  mornings,  the  work  like  some  more  virtu- 
ous holiday.  It  made  no  little  difference  to  the 
digestion  of  our  dialogue  or  our  play  that  they 
came  to  us  with  the  association  not  of  inked  desks 
and  map-hung  walls,  but  of  waving  fields  and 
shining  skies,  the  page  chequered  by  the  sun 
through  the  boughs  stirred  by  the  south  wind,  the 
strophes  tuned  to  the  sound  of  bees  about  the 
flower-plots.  Something  of  the  warmth  and  life  of 
those  June  mornings,  when  the  Doctor  heard  us 
under  the  oak  that  stood  between  the  garden  and 
the  hayfields,  or  in  more  burning  hours  in  the 
black  shadow  beneath  the  great  cedar  on  the  lawn, 
went  into  our  classics ;  and  something,  at  least, 
remains.  Wet  days  there  were,  doubtless,  and 
desperate  aorists  and  iron-hearted  rectangles  to 
balance  the  good  hours;  but  their  memory  is 

100 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

general,  sunk  into  the  undistinguished  ..sea,  .pf, 
young  troubles;  by  a  memorable • grace -st  is  the- 
serene  days  which  emerge.  When  September 
mornings  left  the  rime  too  late  for  us  by  the  oak 
tree,  the  study  was  not  so  ill  a  prison-house. 
Through  the  French  windows  the  landscape  was 
there,  the  lawn,  the  leafless  thickets  waiting  to 
kindle  again  with  the  spring,  making  backgrounds 
for  Medea  or  Antigone  in  our  work,  for  Knights  of 
the  Table  and  Ladies  of  Shalott  in  my  private 
excursions  from  the  text  before  us ;  backgrounds 
at  times,  perhaps,  for  visions  of  adventures  yet  to 
come,  conquering  returns  on  some  day  of  sur- 
passing summer  from  scholarship-quests  or  deeds 
of  yet  higher  emprise.  Most  of  our  company,  I 
think,  did  not  lack  in  such  dreams  the  image  of  a 
sovereign  lady.  I  at  least  owed  service  to  both 
the  princesses  of  the  house,  the  dark  and  the 
fair,  who  often  afar  and  sometimes  by  chance 
encounters  in  nearer  presence  shone  upon  our 
workdays ;  first,  for  a  little,  I  was  slave  to  flaxen- 
haired  Lyddy,  the  blue-eyed  fairy  of  sudden 
friendly  smiles  ;  but  soon,  and  deeply  indeed,  to 
proud  Letty,  who  held  all  the  Doctor's  boys  as  foes 
of  the  house,  a  hateful  stone-throwing,  kitten- 
teasing  race,  to  be  passed  by  with  high-carried 
head  or  warred  down  with  terrific  scorn  of  brave 
brown  eyes.  And  even  without  such  alleviations 
as  these,  the  Doctor's  study  was  in  itself  a  friendly 
place  :  the  panelled  walls  with  their  black-framed 
101 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

Sir  Joshua. mezzotints,  the  bookcases  topped  by 
the  Hom-er  bust  and  the  Theseus  with  his  broken- 
nosed  inscrutable  smile  at  our  Attic  efforts,  the 
long  table,  its  bottom  bar  well  worn  by  generations 
of  restless  boot-heels,  the  rich  atmosphere  of  the 
Doctor's  birdseye  over  all ;  these  made  up  a 
cheerful  spell  only  second  to  the  garden-hours, 
the  light  which  flickered  through  the  oak-boughs, 
the  warm  south  which  twirled  the  pages,  and 
sang  through  the  pipe  of  Pan  with  all  the  concert 
of  June. 

Before  I  had  got  thus  far  in  my  reconstitution 
of  history,  the  shower  was  over  and  the  sun  ablaze 
through  the  drip  of  the  trees.  I  stood  for  another 
five  minutes  under  the  yew  to  hear  the  blackbirds 
break  into  song  as  the  storm  went  by,  thinking 
how  much  of  all  the  gloryings  of  those  old  springs 
came  out  of  the  days  that  were  then  to  be,  kindled 
by  a  sun  yet  below  the  hills.  And  since  now  for 
so  long  a  time  all  the  best  of  April  seems  to  link 
itself  with  the  days  behind,  I  began  to  explore  the 
tract  where  the  change  befel,  the  break  between 
that  forward  and  this  backward-looking  pleasure  : 
and  I  think  I  could  have  fixed  the  time  of  that 
conversion  or  catastrophe,  if  the  precision  had 
been  desirable,  within  a  matter  of  days.  A  black- 
bird sang  on  such  a  morning  as  this  thirty-some- 
thing years  ago,  and  the  praise  I  gave  him  was 
mainly  for  the  promises  he  seemed  to  make  me ; 
to-day  the  gold-mouthed  cheat  does  but  pay  me 

102 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

back  my  own  treasure  that  I  gave  him  when  he 
seemed  to  offer  all  the  world  worth  the  having. 
There  is  a  frame  of  mind  which  can  take  a  sort 
of  sentimental  pleasure  in  acknowledging  a  cheat 
like  this,  which  cultivates  an  actual  distaste  for 
successes  and  gains.  But  it  is  one  which  may 
easily  lose  the  wholesome  balance  of  things  ;  and 
it  is  good  to  let  the  influences  of  the  right  April 
days  rout  the  mild-minded  melancholy  as  they 
very  well  know  how.  There  is  no  waste;  those 
early  transports  were  not  meant  only  to  tickle  the 
susceptibilities  of  leisurely  middle  age ;  they 
screwed  up  into  accord  certain  strings,  we  will 
suppose  ;  the  instrument  once  in  tune  may  be 
laid  aside  for  the  present ;  and  when  on  spring 
mornings  the  stirring  of  the  new  life  reaches  it 
through  windows  seasonably  wide,  some  sympa- 
thetic vibration  of  keynote  making  response,  may 
give  forth  from  the  shelf  where  it  lies,  echoes  of  the 
concert  in  the  outer  world. 


103 


X 


April  22. 

YESTERDAY  the  nightingales  began  to  sing  in 
earnest.  For  a  week  past  a  scolding  churr  as  one 
crossed  the  end  of  a  copse,  a  few  low  notes,  a  sotto 
voce  rehearsing  of  the  cadences,  when  the  keen 
wind  had  dropped  in  a  misty  twilight ;  the  sight, 
even,  of  the  unmistakeable  red-brown  plumage 
amongst  hazel-boughs,  told  us  that  they  were  here. 
But  until  a  restless  north-easter,  with  leaden  sky 
and  a  smoky  haze  across  the  valley,  had  tired  out 
its  spite  and  shifted  south-westerly,  they,  with  all 
the  other  wild  things,  waited  and  were  still. 
Yesterday  the  change  came ;  after  a  night  of 
blowing  rain  we  woke  to  soft  southern  airs,  and  the 
breathing  warmth  which  draws  all  the  sweetness 
from  the  grass  and  mould.  When  the  sun  broke 
out  through  slow-sailing  clouds,  the  dripping  woods 
flushed  with  a  moist  heat  which  brought  out  the 
bluebells  and  anemones  almost  under  one's  eyes. 
The  nightingales  took  their  part  in  the  outbreak 
of  pent-up  song;  but  all  day  they  were  scarcely 
to  be  heard  for  the  hubbub  of  the  tits  and  finches  ; 
and  even  at  the  vesper  hymn  the  blackbirds  and 
104 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

thrushes  sang  them  down.  It  was  only  after  dark, 
in  the  first  rich  stillness  of  the  night,  all  balm  and 
mildness  and  content,  that  they  had  their  hour  ; 
there  were  seven  or  eight  of  them,  perhaps,  within 
earshot,  answering  each  other  from  copse  to  copse, 
each  in  its  wonted  station,  palm-clump  or  hazel- 
alley,  from  which  the  song  has  pealed  every 
spring  of  the  thirty  or  so  within  my  memory  of 
this  neighbourhood. 

It  has  been  a  habit  of  mine  ever  since  I  was  a 
boy,  to  look  out  of  window  at  the  night,  the  last 
thing  before  turning  in,  to  see  how  the  weather 
shapes,  where  the  wind  sits,  whether  the  stars  are 
right  in  their  courses,  before  leaving  the  world  to 
go  its  own  gate  till  morning.  At  my  last  look-out 
yesterday  the  night  was  starry  and  clear  ;  Altair 
in  the  Eagle  hung  just  clear  of  the  tall  elm  by  the 
garden  gate  ;  and  in  the  budding  branches  sang 
the  nightingale  as  it  has  sung  on  spring  nights  as 
long  as  I  have  known  the  tree.  I  believe  that,  as 
a  fact,  the  numeric  bird  does  come  back  to  the 
same  bush  and  bough  during  its  lifetime ;  "  Le 
chantre  rossignolet,"  as  Ronsard  says — 

"...  vient  loger 
Tous  les  ans  en  ta  ramee," 

and  again — 

"  Gentil  rossignol  passager 
Qui  t'es  encor  venu  loger 
Dedans  ceste  fraische  ramee 
Sur  ta  branchette  accoustumee  ..." 
105 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

but  that  does  not  greatly  matter.  The  nightingale 
is  immortal ;  it  is  nothing  to  the  point  to  know 
whether  the  bird  that  sang  here  last  year  fell  a 
prey  to  some  grimalkin  in  Tangier  or  Fez ;  the 
fact  stands  that  the  song  breaks  from  the  tree 
as  punctually  as  Altair  glitters  over  it.  There  is 
much  matter  in  this  parallel  of  migration,  sugges- 
tions to  be  slackly  followed  out,  as  one  leans  with 
one's  elbows  on  the  window-sill,  breathing  the 
divine  tenderness  of  the  night,  kept  out  of  bed  by 
that  poignant  lullaby  from  the  elm-boughs.  If 
the  little  brown  bird  and  the  star  keep  tryst  thus, 
what  accord  of  cycle  and  epicycle  may  not  be  pre- 
dicable  in  our  own  sphere  ? 

Listening  to  the  rich  variety  of  the  song,  the 
long-drawn  stealing  fall,  the  marvellous  liquid 
shake,  the  force  in  the  outburst  of  keen  marteU 
notes,  familiar  for  forty  springs,  yet  year  to  year 
a  still  fresh  wonder,  I  felt  once  more  the  impression 
of  the  duration  of  life  which — rather  than  that  of 
its  transience— grows  upon  me  as  the  seasons 
add  themselves.  We  hear  more  than  enough,  I 
think,  about  vicissitude,  the  mutability  of  fortune, 
and  the  like  ;  little  or  nothing  concerning  the 
difficulty  (as  I  see  it)  in  believing  that  anything 
of  the  setting  and  circumstance  of  our  life  can  ever 
change.  In  the  matter  of  acquaintance  and  of 
neighbourhood,  my  own  strand  of  experience  has 
been  broken  off  and  knotted  on  again  perhaps  as 
much  as  most  men's ;  but  the  trouble  which  I  find 
1 06 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

is  the  keeping  one's  self  awake  to  the  truths  of  lapse 
and  loss  under  the  lulling  persuasiveness  of  those 
immoveable  common  things  that  at  once  shut  in 
and  sustain  our  being.  I  find  this  difficulty  not 
only  in  the  punctuality  of  constellations  and  night- 
ingales, but  in  the  most  trivial  details  of  one's  own 
concerns.  I  sit  in  my  accustomed  place  in  church 
for  so  many  years,  and  the  chisel-marks  on  the 
pillar  before  me — not  learned  by  heart,  as  it  may 
be  with  some  men,  in  slumbrous  Sunday  after- 
noons of  childhood,  but  known  for  a  mere  broken 
length  of  later  years — seem  to  assert  a  fixity  for 
which  their  five  centuries'  clean-cut  graving  is  only 
a  symbol.  I  make  one  of  my  rare  visits  to  town  ; 
and,  sauntering  as  my  wont  is  along  the  line  of 
well-remembered  daily  walks,  I  find  again  at  a 
certain  street  corner  the  rich  cosmetic  atmosphere, 
the  breath  of  macassar  which  hung  there  half  a 
life  ago,  about  the  very  shrine  of  barberdom.  A 
little  farther  on  I  stop  in  a  narrow  alley  before 
a  printseller's  window  ;  and  lo !  there  is  the  very 
etching  of  Water  Meadows,  the  reeds,  the  ragged 
poplars,  which  used  to  draw  me  across  the  pave- 
ment day  by  day,  a  kind  of  revelation  to  eyes 
opening  somewhat  blinkingly  on  new  aspects  and 
perspectives  of  the  world.  Even  in  humanity  I 
find  a  sort  of  stay  or  arrest  of  Time's  hand,  con- 
trary to  all  the  book-rules ;  the  proportion  of  my 
acquaintance  who  "  never  look  a  day  older "  is 
quite  a  large  one.  If  I  go  to  Oxford,  there  is 
107 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

always  Kelly  in  the  lodge— red,  Irish,  military, 
clean  as  a  new  banknote,  enormously  respectable  : 
there  is  the  Dean,  crossing  the  street,  small, 
shrivelled,  with  the  historic  shepherd's -plaid 
trousers,  and  the  top  hat  on  the  back  of  his  head, 
his  soul  browsing  in  the  Anthology,  the  musing 
eyes  focussed  now  and  then  with  an  effort  on  such 
outer  phenomena  as  tramcars  or  bicycles.  Neither 
he  nor  Kelly  shows  a  wrinkle  the  more  ;  and  it  is 
a  surprise  which  I  never  quite  get  rid  of,  that 
neither  Dean  nor  Porter  sees  in  me  the  down- 
chinned,  raw-boned  undergraduate  of  a  mere 
hundred  terms  or  so  since.  The  negative  instances 
which  occur  somehow  fail  to  produce  a  propor- 
tionate effect.  Hicks  the  Bursar's  once  raven 
beard  is  now  nearly  white ;  but  that  is  a  mere 
accident  of  matter  :  one  is  assured  that  Hicks's 
lectures  on  political  economy  have  suffered  no 
change.  And  the  Master  has  certainly  been  dead 
these  three  or  four  gaudies ;  one  reads  the  gilt 
lettering,  already  a  little  tarnished,  on  his  marble 
in  the  ante-chapel,  but  with  a  mind  that  does  not 
fix  itself  on  the  subject.  As  I  said,  it  seems  that 
in  these  matters  it  is  only  the  positive  phenomena 
which  have  weight.  I  will  not  insist  that  this  way 
of  looking  at  the  world  may  not  spring  from  a 
congenital  twist  of  the  perceptions,  and  I  will  grant 
that  the  ultimate  catastrophe  may  be  all  the  more 
impressive  for  a  lifelong  obstination  in  the  con- 
trary sense  ;  but  I  honestly  think  that  as  a  rule 

1 08 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

we  allow  too  little  for  the  effect  of  the  security 
bred  in  us  by  a  view  of  life's  continuity.  I  came 
the  other  day  on  the  chapter  in  Seneca  which 
moralises  about  the  burning  of  Lugdunum,  with  all 
its  marshalling  of  the  vicissitudes  of  existence, 
like  a  schoolboy's  essay.  It  would  be  some  solace, 
he  says,  for  the  briefness  and  feebleness  of  our  days, 
if  things  decayed  as  slowly  as  they  are  matured  ; 
as  it  is,  increase  is  laboriously  wrought  out,  but  all 
things  haste  towards  extinction.  It  depends,  per- 
haps, very  much  upon  the  point  of  view.  I  once 
found  on  a  tree  in  an  old  orchard,  clear  and 
strong,  expanded  to  a  sort  of  grotesque  emphasis, 
the  initials  which  I  hacked  out  in  some  couple  of 
minutes'  playtime  when  I  was  at  school.  In  the 
same  way,  a  single  breath  serves  for  half  a  dozen 
words  which  sting  the  heart  without  pity  after 
fifty  years'  repentance.  Of  course,  when  the  Stoic 
goes  on  to  reckon  up  exile  and  torture  along  with 
sickness,  war  and  shipwreck,  as  common  chances 
of  life,  we  must  admit  he  has  an  argument  which 
we  have  lost.  Perhaps  we  do  not  generally  give 
all  their  due  to  those  old  Romans  who  so  seldom 
died  in  their  beds  :  one  may  speculate,  in  passing, 
what  differences  it  might  make  in  the  public  men 
of  our  day  if  the  dissolution  of  a  ministry  involved 
that  of  its  members,  and  if  their  ultimate  pro- 
bability were  poison  instead  of  peerages.  But 
Seneca's  tale  of  wrecks,  burnings,  earthquakes, 
floods — he  died,  be  it  noted,  some  fourteen  years 
109 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

before  the  catastrophe  of  Pompeii — can  hardly 
have  had  much  more  weight  in  Italy  in  his  day 
than  it  would  have  in  England  now.  It  is  the 
very  ratio  of  such  discrimina  rerum  to  the  common 
tenor  of  the  world,  which  makes  for  that  lulling 
security  of  daily  life.  And  perhaps — to  vent  an 
old  spite  of  mine  on  the  race  of  most  compendious 
liars  which  the  world  has  ever  seen — it  is  the  very 
insistence  of  the  common  type  of  moralists  on  the 
transience  of  things  which  is  answerable  for  the 
recoil  towards  too  large  a  faith  in  their  stability. 
"Nil  privatim,  nil  publice  stabile  est,"  says  the 
philosopher  ;  and  we  deliberately  stiffen  our  trust 
in  Greenwich  time,  the  Bank  of  England,  and  the 
like  fixities  of  the  universe.  In  all  things,  says 
the  philosopher,  we  are  to  look  before  us  and 
excogitate  not  what  usually  happens,  but  what 
may  possibly  come  to  pass.  It  is  a  precept  whose 
observance  might  save  us  a  good  deal  of  trouble ; 
and  as  I  turn  away  at  last  from  the  window,  I  con- 
sider that  before  the  circle  is  complete  again  this 
time  next  year,  Altair  may  have  exploded  upon 
space,  and  the  whole  race  of  nightingales  may 
have  died  of  broken  heart.  But  that  injunction 
does  not  make  sufficient  allowance  for  the  force  of 
common  life,  a  lulling  enchantment  beyond  any 
that  philosophy  knows.  It  would  be  nearer  the 
mark  to  insist  on  the  continuance  of  life  about  us 
and  our  own  transience  amongst  it;  to  think  of 
ourselves  as  held  a  moment  in  the  vortex  of  the 

no 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

spinning  orb,  and  then  flung  out  at  a  tangent,  as 
alive  this  spring  in  every  nerve  to  the  pulse  of  the 
white  fire  and  the  thrill  of  the  voice  in  the  dark, 
in  a  few  more  Aprils  taken  away  from  the  coming 
together  of  the  star  and  the  bird.  As  I  left  the 
window,  there  came  something  of  a  rebellion  I 
have  felt  before  at  such  seeming  disproportion  of 
sentiment,  a  pathos  with  something  like  a  touch 
of  jealousy  in  it,  a  new  meaning  to  "still  wouldst 
thou  sing,  and  I  have  ears  in  vain  " — only  to  be 
borne  by  the  help  of  an  old  surmise  that  such 
puttings-forth  of  beauty  as  these,  the  things  which 
at  every  turn  we  must  look  at  and  listen  to  and 
leave  with  a  helpless  pang,  are  but  the  last  vibra- 
tion of  the  central  light ;  the  belief,  or  the  will  to 
believe,  that  all  the  good  and  fair  things  which  our 
life  ever  and  again  presents,  half-shown  and  with- 
drawn while  scarcely  grasped,  all  the  broken 
lights,  the  suspensions  and  discords  are  but  slight 
motions  of  the  reality  about  us,  felt  as  the  world  is 
felt  by  the  first  momentary  sallies  of  the  child's 
perception— vague  pictures,  as  in  a  dream,  with 
long  interspaces  of  nothingness.  There  is  a  way 
in  which  we  may  think  of  these  intuitions  as  at 
once  fantasy  and  truth  :  a  way  figured  by  the 
chance  of  a  dream  I  had  at  nightingale-time  last 
year.  In  that  last  strange  state,  when  the  dream 
.thins  away  like  morning  mist  before  the  quicken- 
ing warmth  of  life,  and  for  a  moment  we  hang 
somewhere  between  two  worlds,  I  thought  I  was 
in 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

in  a  rich  Eastern  garden,  listening  to  the  night- 
ingale among  blossomed  thickets,  and  watching  a 
point  of  light  which  shone  from  the  top  of  a  vast, 
shadowy  building— mosque  or  dome,  divined  rather 
than  seen  amongst  black  groves  of  cedar.  This 
light  had  a  pulsation  in  its  flame,  which  seemed 
to  keep  time  with  the  throb  of  the  pealing  voice ; 
connected  with  it  (as  I  said  to  myself,  with  the 
fantastic  precision  of  words  we  sometimes  find 
in  dreams),  by  some  strange  relation  of  a  cycle 
of  rhythms.  Then,  as  the  slowly  clearing  mind 
came  awake  and  felt,  so  to  say,  for  its  bearings  in 
the  world  of  sense  again,  the  dark  corners  of  the 
room  and  the  faintly  glimmering  square  of  the 
window,  there  was  the  matter  which  the  half- 
quickened  fancy  had  wrought  upon :  the  star 
hung  glittering  over  the  dark  mass  of  the  elm, 
and  the  song  pealing  from  its  boughs  had  at  once 
broken  and  avouched  the  dream. 


112 


XI 


May  12. 

I  TOOK  the  Warden  with  me  lately  in  one  of  my 
cross-country  walks,  seven  miles  by  field-path  and 
wood,  gate  and  stile,  without  a  step  on  the  high- 
road. In  the  days  of  my  youth  I  tramped  the 
highways  to  some  purpose  ;  I  have  the  Ordnance 
map  of  more  than  one  county,  on  which  the  red- 
inked  record  of  travelled  roads  makes  a  pretty 
close  network.  But  altered  conditions  of  traffic 
have  turned  me  off  the  Macadam  and  into  the 
fields  ;  and  thus  late  do  I  begin  to  discover  the 
full  charm  of  the  innumerable  tracks  and  paths  in 
which  a  man  can  saunter  and  muse  if  he  will, 
unvexed  by  dust-clouds  and  the  rules  of  the  road. 
I  am  already  coming  to  regard  the  highway,  when 
I  chance  on  it  in  my  rambles,  as  "  pays  suspect  " 
much  as  do  the  wild  things,  stoat  or  rabbit,  looking 
cautiously  up  and  down  it,  and  scuttling  across  it 
into  the  safe  covert  of  the  green  depths  on  either 
hand.  The  brooding  quiet  of  some  woodland 
hollow  is  all  the  deeper  for  the  noises  which 
faintly  reach  it  from  the  London  road,  the  howl 
of  flying  gears,  the  hoarse  quack  as  of  some  great 


113 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

The  way  I  took  led  through  a  succession  of 
copses,  some  of  which  had  been  cleared  this 
spring  of  their  underwood.  The  Warden  was 
for  grumbling  at  the  destruction ;  and  at  first 
sight  the  bald  slopes  of  trodden  ground,  with 
hardly  a  primrose  to  grace  them,  littered  with 
twigs,  and  rough  with  the  hacked  stubs,  con- 
trasted unhappily  enough  with  the  untouched 
thicket,  where  the  hyacinths  clothed  the  ground 
with  living  blue — a  sapphire  with  a  greenish  under- 
play— and  the  galaxies  of  the  stellaria  shone  along 
the  banks.  But,  as  I  told  the  Warden,  it  is  pre- 
cisely to  the  rigid  system  of  periodical  clearing 
that  we  owe  the  incomparable  beauty  of  our 
sylvan  springs.  Where  a  wood  has  been  left  to 
itself  for  thirty  years,  the  explorer,  if  he  can  force 
his  way  through  the  thicket,  will  find  the  ground 
bare  and  dead,  all  growth  stifled  by  the  green  roof 
overhead.  But  when  the  woodmen  have  lopped 
the  glades,  and  have  thinned  the  larger  timber 
in  places,  even  the  first  year  there  is  a  flush  of 
life  that  has  lain  dormant  there,  trails  of  ground- 
ivy  and  spurges  uncurling  ;  the  second  year  the 
primroses  have  lodged  themselves  all  over  the 
cleared  ground ;  the  third  spring  they  are  in  their 
glory  ;  and  before  the  stubs  of  the  underwood  have 
sprouted  again  to  more  than  a  spare  covert,  the 
bluebells  have  run  together  from  groups  and 
scatterings  here  and  there  to  isles  and  continents 
of  heavenly  colour.  Just  for  the  moment,  when 

114 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

one  finds  the  billhook  levelling  a  favourite  shaw 
and  opening  the  secret  alleys  to  the  common  day 
one  grudges  the  change,  and  says  something  to 
one's  self  of  the  lucum  ligna  kind ;  but  when  one  has 
seen  this  harvest  of  the  woods,  the  cycle  of  growth, 
and  clearance  at  work  for  the  best  part  of  a  lifetime, 
and  observed  the  delight  of  Nature  in  clothing  the 
fresh  ground,  and  all  her  degrees  of  changing 
beauty  till  the  copse  stands  thick  and  green  again, 
one  recognises  the  woodman  as  no  mean  artist, 
and  feels  how  intimately  human  handiwork  has 
become  part  of  the  most  characteristic  English 
landscape. 

In  Horse  Wood  we  found  John  Board,  a  here- 
ditary billman,  and  his  mate  busy  among  the 
underwood,  beside  their  rough-built  shelter  with 
all  their  tackle  about  them — stick-faggots,  ether- 
boughs,  thatching-rods,  cleft  oak  for  wattles.  The 
fire  under  the  kettle  sent  a  drift  of  blue  haze  across 
the  clearing,  and  the  two  men  were  just  ready  to 
knock  off  for  dinner.  Their  life  is  astonishingly 
simple  and  archaic,  and  one  of  the  wholesomest  in 
the  world  ;  dry-shod  in  dead  leaves  and  fern  while 
the  ploughman  splashes  along  the  drenched  fur- 
rows, snug  by  the  stick  fire  in  the  lew  hollow  while 
the  snow-wind  nips  the  shepherd  on  the  down, 
these  "  leather-legged  chaps,"  the  "  clay  and  coppice 
people,"  as  Cobbett  called  them,  are  still,  as  they 
were  at  the  time  of  the  "  Rural  Rides,"  most 
favoured  of  all  who  live  on  the  land.  The  billhook 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

is  almost  the  only  tool  they  need ;  a  felling-axe 
may  be  wanted  for  the  larger  saplings,  and  a  draw- 
knife  for  shaving  the  thatching-rods ;  the  wood 
itself  furnishes  all  the  rest :  chopping-blocks,  levers, 
wedges,  bonds  for  the  faggots,  are  all  made  as  they 
are  wanted  from  the  material  everywhere  lying  at 
hand ;  the  little  "  lodge "  or  shed  for  rough 
weather  is  built  of  faggots  and  thatched  with  hoop- 
shavings.  Nothing  is  wasted  ;  the  very  chips  and 
litter  make  the  fire  over  which  the  kettle  sings, 
hung  on  a  handy  hazel  crook  stuck  into  the 
ground. 

We  sat  a  few  minutes  on  a  pile  of  faggots  to 
pass  the  time  of  day  with  John  Board,  a  small, 
shrivelled  greybeard,  keen-eyed,  spry  to  the  last 
degree,  tongue-free,  the  captain  of  all  woodcutting 
hereabouts.  His  mate,  Luke  Holman,  a  heavy- 
shouldered  giant,  taciturn  and  impenetrable,  tended 
the  fire  with  his  back  towards  the  conversation. 
In  the  upper  wood  a  number  of  sizeable  oaks  had 
been  "  thrown  and  flawed,"  and  the  men  had  been 
busy  putting  up  the  dried  bark  into  bundles. 
Chichester,  or  Horsham,  it  was  going  to,  said  old 
John  ;  he  didn't  know  which ;  it  was  the  same 
man  had  the  tanyard  at  both  on  'em.  How  was 
the  bark  selling  ?  Why,  better  than  what  it  was  a 
year' — two  ago  ;  they  seemed  to  reckon  as  they 
couldn't  do  without  it,  after  all.  It  wasn't  any- 
thing like  what  he  could  remember,  but  better 
than  what  it  was  the  last  time  they  was  throwing 
116 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

in  Horse  Wood ;  then  they  didn't  flaw  anything 
smaller  than  your  wrist,  but  now  you'd  got  to  go 
middling  far  up  the  spray. 

The  Warden  asks  if  old  John  knows  where  the 
leather  goes  to  when  it  comes  out  of  the  tanyard? 
Old  John  shakes  his  head  :  London,  he  'spects 
.  .  .  mos'  things  goes  to  London  now.  And  not 
so  long  ago,  the  Warden  asks,  there  were  tanyards 
in  almost  every  village  ?  There  was  that,  replies 
the  woodman  :  he  could  recollect  them  working  at 
Arn'ton  and  Shern'am  up  till  'sixty,  pretty  near. 

"  And  you  could  know  where  your  leather  came 
from  then,  and  could  know  that  it  was  leather  ? " 
asks  the  Warden  again,  looking  meditatively  at  a 
cracked  boot-upper.  Oh,  ay,  there  wasn't  much 
of  this  here  truck  that  rots  as  soon  as  ye  starts 
wearing  of  it ;  'twas  all  oak-bark  then.  And  he 
'spects  people  can  get  it  now — them  as  reckons  to 
have  good  stuff.  The  Warden  nods  reflectively  : 
"  them  as  reckons  to  have  good  stuff,"  he  murmurs 
to  himself,  as  a  fruitful  summary  of  the  whole 
matter.  We  left  the  woodmen  to  their  refection, 
earned  as  not  many  lunches  are  earned,  taken  in 
serene  leisure,  after  a  rub  on  the  corduroys  of  the 
palms  scored  and  blackened  from  the  hazel  bond, 
in  the  snug  lee  of  the  faggot  pile,  with  the  boot- 
heels  stretched  luxuriously  into  the  hyacinth  carpet, 
with  the  sunlit  woods  misting  drowsily  through  the 
blue  haze  from  the  Sire.  In  the  upper  wood  we 
found  havock  to  dismay  at  first  sight  even  a  man 

117 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

used  to  the  woodland  economy.  A  score  of  oaks 
were  down,  the  flayed  trunks  thrown  pell-mell 
among  the  trampled  anemones,  the  lopped  spray, 
which  was  already  in  yellow  leaf,  withering  in 
shattered  confusion  all  about.  Some  of  the  fallen 
were  but  timber — trees  of  the  crowd,  mere  sixty- 
foot  masts,  with  a  head  of  boughs  at  the  top 
fighting  for  light  and  air ;  but  there  were  two  or 
three  on  the  edge  of  the  wood  with  characters  of 
their  own,  that  had  been  a  sort  of  landmarks  in 
my  walks,  the  pattern  of  whose  ivy-trails  and  the 
grey  wrinklings  of  whose  boles  had  printed  them- 
selves on  my  memory  in  a  thousand  conjunctions 
of  varying  mood  and  weather.  Worst  of  all,  just 
beyond  the  wood,  there  was  a  sudden  gap  that 
struck  the  mind  with  something  of  the  rebellious 
grief  proper  to  graver  losses.  The  noble  tree 
which  crowned  the  knoll  beyond  the  wood,  spread- 
ing his  boughs  twenty  yards  into  the  cornfield  on 
the  one  side,  and  thrusting  back  the  thicket  as  far 
behind  him,  the  honoured  friend  whose  stately 
strength  I  have  stood  to  look  at  summer  and 
winter — the  mighty  muscle  of  the  bared  limbs  or 
the  dome  of  massy  leafage  whose  outline  the 
perfect  prime  of  age  had  brought  to  the  full  semi- 
circle— lies  shattered  and  dinted  into  the  clay 
among  the  springing  wheat.  Every  time  I  went 
by  him  I  used  to  make  an  inward  salutation  to 
his  absolute  fulfilment  of  the  function  of  a  tree, 
with  a  back-handed  reference,  perhaps,  to  some 
118 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

prevalent  standards  of  human  completeness.  As 
we  stood  by  the  great  sawn  butt,  as  high  as  a 
man's  shoulder,  the  Warden  counted  the  rings 
of  the  grain — two  hundred  and  eighty,  if  the  axe 
had  not  robbed  him  of  some  years  at  the  edge — 
and  made  a  rough  calculation  of  the  feet  of  timber 
in  the  trunk.  I  found  myself  wondering  what  I 
would  give,  over  and  above  the  price  he  will  fetch 
in  the  woodyard,  to  have  him  up  and  green  once 
more,  and  saying  that  it  would  be  a  long  time 
before  I  care  to  take  my  walk  through  Horse 
Wood  again. 

As  it  happened,  I  found  myself  there  only  a 
night  or  two  afterwards,  and  sat  for  half  an  hour 
on  a  bough  of  the  fallen  giant,  with  a  score  of  his 
fellows  glimmering  about  me  in  the  dusk  on  the 
flower-strewn  slope,  and  the  clean  raw  smell  of 
the  oak  sap  filling  all  the  air.  I  had  nodded  and 
roused  myself  once  or  twice,  when  all  at  once 
I  saw  the  souls  of  the  trees,  the  Dryads,  gathered 
together  in  a  company,  coming  down  the  wood- 
men's path,  sighing  as  they  came  with  a  thin  echo 
of  their  old  tree-top  music  and  pacing  slowly 
amongst  their  shattered  boughs.  They  were 
shepherded  by  Hermes,  who  bore  a  felling-axe 
in  place  of  his  wand.  At  the  brow  where  the 
path  drops  steeply  to  the  sallow-grown  bottoms 
of  the  wood,  they  met  with  Pan,  who  seemed  to 
complain  of  the  wrong  done  to  his  realm  and  the 
exile  of  his  people.  "  That  I  have  charge  to  bring 
119 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

them  over  Styx  is  true,"  I  heard  Hermes  say; 
"but  shall  there  not  be  oaks  in  the  under-world, 
and  souls  to  inhabit  them  sufficient  for  the  wood- 
lands of  the  blest  ?  Doth  not  Jove  take  thus  at 
their  season  the  tree,  and  the  hyacinths  beneath 
it,  and  the  grass,  so  that  there  may  be  no  lack 
of  shade  there,  nor  of  soft  lying,  nor  of  garlands 
for  those  who  rest  ?  These,  and  many  another  sort 
of  good  things  beside  I  convey  from  men's  sight 
into  the  darkness ;  or  how  should  they,  when  they 
have  been  ferried  over,  find  all  that  the  poets  told 
them  should  be  there?  And  so,  fair  son,  let 
me  on  with  my  flock." 

With  that  he  passed  on,  and  when  I  rubbed 
my  eyes  and  looked  after  them,  there  was  nothing 
there  but  a  wreath  of  mist  rising  from  the  hidden 
turns  of  the  brook,  and  no  sound  but  the  cry  of 
the  plover  from  the  fallow  beyond  the  wood.  I 
left  the  lopped  trunk  and  the  litter  of  withering 
leaves,  pleasing  myself  with  the  fancy  that  some- 
where the  soul  of  the  tree  was  budding  freshly, 
and  the  well-remembered  shadow  was  falling 
across  the  wood-violets  and  anemones  in  the  light 
of  a  fairer  sky. 


120 


XII 

June  24. 

WHEN  I  called  at  Burntoak  Farm  last  week  for  a 
talk  with  Mrs.  Ventom,  I  found  her  making  tea  for 
Lady  Anne  in  the  kitchen.  Such  a  conjunction  of 
feminine  capability  is  a  memorable  thing,  if  a  little 
arduous,  for  the  chance-comer  to  the  feast.  It  is 
rather  as  if  an  honest  Boeotian,  going  to  pay  a  call 
at  the  Delphic  shrine,  had  found  the  Sibyl  enter- 
taining her  colleague  of  Cumae.  Both  the  ladies 
are  most  serenely  and  practicably  wise  in  their 
several  ways,  and  I  always  maintain  that  Lady 
Anne  might,  with  great  profit  to  her  neighbours, 
take  over  the  whole  law-business  of  this  circuit, 
while  Mrs.  Ventom's  judgment  should  certainly 
supersede  the  present  form  and  matter  of  our 
County  Council.  But,  like  some  exceptional 
voices,  their  gifts  seem  formed  to  mix  their 
high  and  low  together  in  concert :  they  inspire 
each  other  when  they  confer.  If  they  would  but 
put  their  heads  together  about  their  country's 
government,  I  protest  that  a  week's  specimen 
of  their  management  would  be  enough  to  sweep 
away  the  tangle  of  impersonal  enactment  and 

121 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

impossible  persons,  and  to  upset  the  whole  con- 
catenation, from  the  calamitous  Tom  Gates  with 
his  tipsy  vote,  up  to  the  public-spirited  gentlemen 
who  form  the  summit  of  the  dear  device.  But 
what  hope  is  there  of  any  such  devolution,  when 
the  inspiration  of  the  Sibyls  springs  entirely  from 
the  religion  of  minding  the  business  that  lies  next 
at  hand? 

Mrs.  Ventom  has  not  learned  to  concede  the 
modern  whimsy  of  meals  out-of-doors.  A  garden 
is  very  well  at  proper  times,  she  holds  ;  but  it  was 
not  made  to  eat  in  ;  and  if  she  abhors  one  manner 
of  eating,  it  is  what  she  calls  "tea  in  her  lap."  I 
found  the  great  kitchen,  with  its  black  oak  ceiling 
and  stone  floor,  pleasantly  cool  and  dark  after  the 
glaring  dust  of  Plash  Lane  in  its  summer  guise. 
The  table,  with  its  historic  damask  got-up  as  Mrs. 
Ventom  knows  how,  with  its  ample  provision — the 
butter,  the  cream,  the  honey,  the  jams,  the  cakes, 
all  answering  her  inexorable  standard  of  home- 
made perfection — was  a  lesson  in  forgotten  arts. 
Both  door  and  windows  stood  wide,  and  through 
them  we  looked  out  on  the  sunlit  greenery  of  the 
garden.  Mrs.  Ventom,  as  becomes  the  mistress  of 
three  hundred  acres,  and  a  power  in  the  parish,  is 
rather  contemptuous  towards  the  house-piece,  the 
twenty  rods  or  so  allotted  to  such  mere  luxuries  as 
gooseberries  or  shallots ;  none  the  less,  the  green- 
stuff flourishes  beyond  the  ordinary,  and  the 
flowers — seemingly  chance-set  among  the  worts 

122 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

in  the  old  way,  a  vast  lavender  bush,  a  rose 
hollyhock,  a  tuft  of  white  pinks — fit  into  their 
places  and  come  into  the  picture  in  a  fashion 
missed  by  some  more  painful  gardeners'  designs. 
Such  graces  as  these  are  kept  in  their  places  by 
sound  utilities ;  a  midsummer  hatch  of  white 
Dorkings  scratches  about  the  pinks,  and  the 
flagged  path  between  the  box  borders  and  the 
lavender  is  lined  with  rows  of  cream-pans,  glitter- 
ing dazzlingly  in  the  afternoon  sun. 

My  arrival  only  suspended  for  a  minute  or  two 
a  discussion  of  intimate  domestic  affairs,  as  lively 
and  actual  as  only  a  couple  of  really  strong-headed 
women  can  make  it ;  and  while  I  heard  the  counts 
of  the  indictment  against  Hetty  Dawes  the  kitchen- 
maid,  I  compared,  as  I  have  done  at  other  times, 
the  looks  and  ways  of  the  two  wise  women,  the 
bailiff's  widow  and  the  earl's  daughter,  so  curiously 
alike  through  their  differences,  and  thought  what 
an  education  the  pair  might  afford  to  some  simple 
propounders  of  equality,  in  the  science,  hardly  yet 
conceived  of,  of  levelling  or  fitting  in.  The  perfect 
understanding  of  positions  and  absolute  ease  in 
them,  the  immunities  of  half  a  life's  friendship, 
the  fine  intuitions  by  which  the  lesser  lady 
derogated  and  the  greater  assumed,  might  have 
taught  a  new  category  of  ideas  to  all  that  painful 
world  which  for  ever  scrambles  and  kicks  to  keep 
its  own  head  at  the  heaven-appointed  altitude  in 
the  scale  of  creation.  In  the  matter  of  looks,  the 
123 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

mistress  of  the  farm,  no  doubt,  carries  it  easily  at 
first  sight  She  is  one  of  those  rare  people  whose 
dressing  seems  an  inevitable  part  of  themselves, 
and  no  mere  appendage,  as  pleasantly  characteristic 
as  the  wholesome  complexion  or  the  springy  gait ; 
whether  one  view  her  in  her  dairying  print  and 
apron,  or  in  her  church-going  black  silk,  one  pro- 
nounces that  nothing  more  is  wanted,  that  the 
alert,  well-turned  figure,  the  fine  hands — proof, 
it  seems,  against  the  rasp  of  house-work — the 
smooth  brown  hair,  the  clear  colour  in  the  spare, 
rather  high-boned  cheeks,  could  not  possibly  look 
better  in  any  sort  of  tire  but  the  one  that  is  on. 
Whereas  Lady  Anne's  old  black  mushroom  hat, 
her  quaint  home-made  jacket,  with  its  business- 
like pockets,  the  darned  gloves  of  her  country 
walks  are  an  effectual  disguise.  She  has  grown 
stouter  of  late  years,  and  her  face,  seen  in  side- 
view,  with  half-drooped  eyelid  and  sunken  chin, 
sometimes  looks  a  little  heavy  and  inert:  her 
white  hair  is  apt,  in  the  ordinary  course,  to  stray 
rather  disorderly.  But  one  has  only  to  listen  to 
her  voice,  to  get  a  look  from  the  light  blue  eyes,  a 
look  for  the  most  part  one  of  serene  appraisement, 
but  sometimes  lit  with  an  imperious  fire,  in  order 
to  understand  all  that  is  told  of  the  place  she  held 
in  London  before  she  lost  her  son  and  withdrew 
from  the  world  at  thirty.  There  is,  I  think,  some 
bond  between  her  and  Mrs.  Ventom,  which  had 
its  beginning  in  that  time ;  they  were  together,  I 

124 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

imagine,  when  the  catastrophe  happened,  nearly 
forty  years  ago,  and  out  of  the  trouble  grew  one 
of  those  understandings  which  are  the  closer  and 
more  lasting  for  their  being  rarely  or  never 
expressed  in  words. 

The  delinquency  of  Hetty  Dawes  was  the 
main  strand  of  the  talk  on  this  occasion.  There 
was,  indeed,  a  somewhat  perfunctory  attempt  to 
bring  in  on  my  behalf  the  weather  and  the 
prospects  of  the  gooseberry  crop,  but  I  have 
managed  to  acquire  with  my  acquaintance  the 
character  of  a  general  philosopher,  who  can  see 
his  own  affair  in  the  greater  part  of  other  people's 
subjects ;  and  presently,  without  much  apology, 
we  came  round  to  the  little  kitchen-maid  again. 
To  outward  view  Hetty  is  almost  pretty,  ac- 
cording to  our  not  very  exacting  standard, 
with  the  casual  prettiness  of  colour  and  ways  of 
looking  and  smiling,  which  just  carries  off  the 
slack-knit  frame  and  blunted  features  of  the  race. 
As  to  her  ghostly  part,  she  is  just  one  more  of 
those  heartbreaking  little  nonentities  which  we 
breed  in  such  multitudinous  uniformity.  She 
seems  to  have  nothing  about  her  so  positive  as 
either  vices  or  virtues,  her  mistress  says  ;  it  is 
doubtful  whether  she  has  any  innate  motions  at 
all,  except  perhaps  an  instinctive  power  of  dodging 
work  and  a  propensity,  leisurely,  but  one  that 
arrives,  towards  amusement  gratis.  Three  years' 
drill  at  Burntoak  having  made  her  really  useful 
125 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

at  due  range  of  tether,  she  gives  notice,  not 
altogether  unexpectedly.  No,  she  has  nothing 
to  complain  of;  she  doesn't  want  to  be  recom- 
mended to  any  one,  thank  you ;  she  has  heard 
of  a  place  in  Bayswater,  and  has  written  to  the 
lady.  And  she  had  only  turned  her  hair  up  a 
month  before!  They  always  go  like  that  then: 
there  must  be  actually  something  in  the  operation 
which  affects  the  brain,  Mrs.  Ventom  thinks, 
meditating  the  drift  of  a  long  and  strenuous 
experience  of  scullery-maids. 

"  It  wasn't  always  so,  Lucy,"  says  Lady  Anne. 
"You'll  remember  Jane  Burtenshaw " 

"Yes,and  Polly  Knight,"  replies  thewidow;  "they 
were  made  differently,  somehow,  then.  Jenny 
couldn't  read  a  line,  and  Polly  could  but  write 
her  name.  It's  education  that  does  it,  my  lady." 

"  Oh,  Lucy ! "  cries  Lady  Anne,  with  a  grave 
shake  of  the  head,  rallying  to  the  conventions  in 
countercheck  to  Mrs.  Ventom's  more  sweeping 
iconoclasm. 

"Well,  what  they  call  education,  my  lady.  If 
the  schooling  they  get  was  made  or  meant  for 
country-folk,  it  would  be  another  thing.  You'll 
remember  the  inspector  last  year,  who  wanted  us 
to  plant  roses  on  the  north  side  of  the  schoolhouse, 
and  made  all  the  children  laugh  with  his  question 
about  swedes.  And  there's  poor  Dempster  who 
went  out  naturalising  and  caught  a  cockchafer, 
and  wanted  to  argue  against  the  whole  school  that 
126 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

it  was  something  else.  It's  Londoners  teaching 
the  children  to  be  Londoners  all  through  ;  and 
then  they  wonder  why  they  want  to  leave  the 
country  and  go  into  the  towns." 

"  But  there's  been  a  good  deal  of  improvement 
lately,"  says  Lady  Anne,  still  showing  a  gravity 
which  I  suspect  as  slightly  beyond  the  needs  of 
the  case ;  "  they  have  actually  been  talking  about 
teaching  field-work  and  house-work." 

"And  who's  to  do  the  teaching?"  asks  Mrs. 
Ventom,  smiling  at  some  vision,  perhaps,  of  certain 
top-hatted  visitors  she  knows,  over  their  boots  in 
her  ten-acre  in  January.  "  They  don't  even  know 
the  outside  of  their  own  business  yet,  with  all  their 
talk  about  the  science  of  teaching ;  pouring  stuff 
out  of  a  spout  is  all  they  can  think  of.  ...  If 
they'd  ever  had  to  fatten  ducks,  now,"  she  goes  on 
meditatively,  "  they'd  have  learnt  that  there's  some 
hold  more  than  others.  But  it's  all  straight  out 
of  the  books.  They  don't  seem  to  reckon,"  con- 
cludes Mrs.  Ventom,  with  an  analogy  after  her 
wont,  "  that  you  can  put  a  fire  out  with  coal." 

"But  about  Hetty,"  Lady  Anne  began  again, 
going  back  to  an  old  prejudice  of  hers ;  "we  might 
have  found  her  a  good  place  somewhere  in  the 
country,  Lucy.  You  say  she  has  never  been  out  of 
Sheringham  yet ;  she's  a  mere  child,  and  London's 
a  terrible  place.  Surely,  if  you'd  used  a  little 
authority " 

Mrs.  Ventom  shook  her  head.  "People  must 
127 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

learn/'  was  all  she  would  say ;  "  learn  and  find  out 
for  themselves." 

Just  then  Hetty  herself  came  into  sight,  busy 
about  the  milk-pans  along  the  box  hedge,  and 
both  the  judges  turned  to  look  at  her,  out  in  the 
clear  light  of  the  garden,  and  I  looked  at  the 
judges.  The  two  faces  offered  a  curious  contrast 
of  expression.  Lady  Anne's  was  solicitous  and 
very  tender,  as  she  watched  the  little  busy  head 
with  its  new-learned  vanity  of  flaxen  top-knot; 
Mrs.  Ventom's  meaning,  as  she  repeated  her 
formula,  "  They've  got  to  learn,  my  lady,"  was  not 
so  easy  to  interpret;  but  I  thought  that  I  saw 
underneath  the  hardness  a  deeper  care  even  than 
Lady  Anne's,  the  tenderness  which  has  learned  not 
to  fight  against  the  strangeness  of  the  ways  of  life, 
knows  something  of  the  cost  lit  cannot  pay,  the 
things  that  must  be  let  alone  for  ever. 

The  unconscious  culprit  finished  her  tidying 
up  by  the  box  hedge,  and  the  court  went  back 
to  the  consideration  of  causes  again.  None  of 
us — our  memories  being  of  about  the  same  span, 
and,  I  think,  agreeing  to  a  considerable  extent 
in  a  selective  turn — had  any  need  to  go  beyond 
the  obvious  post  hoc  of  the  schools.  Once  more 
Mrs.  Ventom  fixes,  with  her  own  homely  illustra- 
tions, on  the  nerveless,  slack-sinewed  methods  of 
the  educational  hierarchy,  the  want  of  mother-wit 
and  grasp  of  the  rude  elements  of  life.  They 
have  shut  themselves  up  in  a  dead  world  of  their 
128 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

own  till,  in  matters  of  plain  sense,  they  are  stupider 
than  the  dullest  child  they  set  up  to  teach.  "  I've 
never  come  across  a  master  yet/'  she  says,  "nor 
an  inspector  either,  for  that  matter,  who  remem- 
bered that  what  you  put  first  into  a  box  when 
you're  packing  it,  comes  out  last.  But  it  makes 
a  difference,  when  you  want  to  get  at  the  things. 
Not  that  there's  anything  in  most  of  them,  when 
you  do  get  them  open." 

And  with  that  she  began  to  tie  her  bonnet 
strings — the  signal  of  dismissal — and  made  ready 
to  see  Lady  Anne  back  to  the  highroad.  I  took 
my  way  home  round  by  Nyman's  Corner,  and 
chancing  on  the  outrush  of  the  children  coming 
out  of  school,  had  opportunity  to  observe  the 
prevalence  of  pale  faces  and  dull  looks  and 
undeveloped  frames — a  strange  alteration,  within 
my  recollection,  from  the  sun-bleached  heads,  the 
walnut  complexions,  the  stout  little  anatomies, 
checked  by  the  very  abundance  of  exercise  in 
light  and  air,  but  prompt  to  shoot  up  and 
broaden  at  the  due  season,  which  were  to  be  seen 
before  we  had  learned  to  imprison  the  forming- 
age  for  the  best  part  of  the  day  within  stuffy 
walls,  at  best  nurseries  of  dirt  and  sickness, 
sometimes — as  Nyman's  Corner  taught  us  but  last 
summer — deadly  with  bungled  drains.  We  were 
never,  I  judge,  at  any  time  a  particularly  well- 
favoured  race  hereabouts  ;  yet  the  red  cheeks  and 
clear  eyes  to  be  seen  among  the  outliers  of  the 
129  K 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

farms,  if  not  in  the  purlieus  of  the  village,  used 
to  carry  it  off  pretty  well.  Nowadays  the  mis- 
featured  faces  and  shapeless  heads  get  no  help 
from  the  blessed  sun  and  wind ;  our  skins  are 
bleached,  our  legs  are  atrophied,  our  chests  con- 
tracted, in  order  that  our  souls  may  take  the  like- 
ness— just  heavens! — the  likeness  of  the  soul  of 
Dempster  and  his  kind. 

As  I  shook  off  the  little  crowd,  and  got  out  of 
range  of  their  cheerful  noise — and  alack  !  of  their 
appeal  to  another  sense — I  overtook  the  Warden, 
and  walked  with  him  as  far  as  the  head  of  the 
street,  propounding  some  of  the  doubts  which  I 
had  been  entertaining,  and  finding  him,  in  his 
positive,  unhesitating  way,  full  of  the  same  subject. 
That  aura  which  I  had  passed  through  had 
evidently  reached  his  nose  ;  there  was  at  least  one 
uniform  product  of  the  system  always  to  be  had : 
for  the  manufacture  of  froust  trust  the  elementary 
schools!  Some  day  it  would,  of  course,  strike 
people  that  education  might  include  learning  to 
wash.  I  got  the  Warden  to  give  me  the  text  of  a 
place  in  Xenophon  that  was  in  my  head,  about 
the  occupations  which  compel  people  KaOijaOai  KOL 
(TKiaTpafaiaQai,  to  sit  indoors  and  live  out  of  the 
sun ;  and  he  reminded  me  of  some  more  sound 
remarks  in  the  passage,  how  that  people  reared 
under  those  conditions  are  not  much  use  to  their 
friends,  and  make  poor  defenders  of  their  country. 
"  And  we  shan't  mend  that,"  says  the  Warden, 
130 


LONEWOOD    CORNER 

"  by  having  a  drill-sergeant  for  them  once  a  week. 
Oh,  the  imbecile  wiseacres  of  authorities,  who  just 
begin  to  have  a  glimmering  that  the  body  counts 
for  something,  and  talk  about  school-dinners ! 
We  shall  have  to  get  back  to  Plato,  and  make 
Asklepios  a  politician,  before  we  can  give  the 
poor  little  wretches  a  chance." 

I  quoted  some  of  Mrs.  Ventom's  dicta  about  the 
personnel  of  the  system.  "  Ay,"  says  the  Warden, 
"the  head  that  woman  has!  They've  got  the 
wrong  men  everywhere.  Take  the  committee ; 
think  of  our  good  Sims-Bigg,  and  Billy  Hicks  the 
educationalist !  And  then  all  those  bloodsuckers 
in  the  departments — don't  you  know  the  type  ? — 
sweating  Firsts  in  History  like  Chepmell  and 
Blagden  and  Poppleton — with  their  annual  increase 
and  pensions,  and  their  seventy-pound  houses  at 
Bromley  or  Muswell  Hill — damned  souls  from  the 
day  they  began  to  spell.  One  might  get  over 
them,  though,  or  put  up  with  them  ;  it's  the  Heads 
and  the  Parliament  men  that  make  one  absolutely 
hopeless  :  they  must  know  better,  one  thinks.  Old 
Herder — he  comes  to  see  me  generally  when  he's 
over  from  Bonn — insists  it's  simply  a  plan  of  the 
powerful  to  Helotise  the  lower  orders  for  their  own 
ends  ;  and,  on  my  word,  it  looks  uncommonly  like 
it.  Of  course  the  Radicals  would  be  sentimental 
fools  enough  to  play  into  the  hands  of  the  con- 
spirators, thinking  we're  going  to  have  the  Millen- 
nium that  way.  The  fool  or  rogue  dilemma  comes 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

in  somehow.  People  like  our  Billy,  and  even  like 
Chepmell,  perhaps  really  believe  in  themselves. 
There's  some  hope  of  a  man  like  Chepmell,  who  is 
suddenly  illuminated  after  twenty  years  in  the 
office,  and  discovers  that  it  is  a  life  and  death 
matter  to  interest  the  children  in  the  land.  Not 
the  slightest  distrust  of  themselves  for  having  been 
wrong  for  half  a  lifetime  ;  they  start  gaily  on  the 
new  tack,  more  convinced  of  their  infallibility  than 
ever.  But  the  politicians ! — well,  you  know  where 
I  think  their  illumination  comes  from :  '  darkness 
visible,' eh?" 

To  all  this  I  nodded  my  head  and  agreed,  as  I 
hope  a  wise  man  may,  feeling  the  satisfaction  of 
hearing  some  one  else  go  further  than  one's  own 
proprieties  would  quite  concede,  and  getting,  like 
Panurge  with  his  page,  one's  cursing  done  by 
proxy.  When  I  bade  the  Warden  good  night  at 
the  Almshouse  gate,  we  were  agreed  that  there  could 
be  no  beginning  of  real  elementary  education  in 
the  country  till  the  whole  of  the  present  ghastly 
simulacrum  was  swept  out  of  the  way,  and  the 
hands  of  Billy  Hicks  and  Dempster  and  Chepmell 
put  to  some  less  momentous  business  than  shaping 
the  destiny  of  the  race.  As  I  climbed  the  hill 
homewards  I  mused  what  sort  of  account  little 
Hetty  Dawes  would  present  against  those  busy 
traffickers,  in  the  great  final  clearing-house  of  debts 
and  credits,  whose  existence  is  one  of  the  most 
consolatory  of  my  private  and  supplementary  tenets, 
132 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

I  was  at  Burntoak  again  yesterday  afternoon, 
and  found  that  Hetty's  term  was  up,  and  that  she 
was  to  leave  by  the  next  morning's  carrier.  On 
my  way  through  the  village  I  had  met  Mrs.  Sims- 
Bigg,  home  for  a  few  days  from  the  whirl  of  the 
season  in  town.  There  was  no  resisting  or  escap- 
ing her ;  town  was  such  a  change  ;  everybody 
wanted  a  change ;  /  wanted  a  change,  most 
decidedly :  the  country  was  all  right  in  August, 
and  for  a  Sunday — now  and  then  ;  but  really  to 
appreciate  it,  one  must  be  back  in  Kensington 
again.  I  must  come  up  and  rub  the  rust  off  a 
bit ;  a  year  in  the  country  made  people  positively 
mouldy.  Under  this  sort  of  education  I  scuffled 
along  deprecatingly,  as  I  have  seen  a  small  boy 
reluctant,  ear-led  by  domestic  law ;  and  only  when 
the  irresistible  lady  had  gone,  shrieking  to  me 
through  the  noise  of  her  carriage-wheels  the 
address  of  some  Brompton  lodgings,  which  I  was 
to  engage  at  once,  did  I  think  of  all  the  neat 
remarks  with  which  I  should  have  defied  her.  I 
carried  on  something  of  these  reflections  while  I 
sat  in  Mrs.  Ventom's  kitchen,  and  watched  Hetty 
Dawes  rinse  her  cream-pans  for  the  last  time  at 
Burntoak.  I  thought  of  the  gasping  nights  and 
the  garish  mornings  when  nose  and  eyes  take  the 
whirling  dust  and  manure  at  the  gusty  corners,  of 
the  burden  of  the  omnibuses  going  by  from  light 
to  dark  at  the  next  turning,  of  the  horizon  of 
chimney-pots  and  sooty  spires  :  of  all  this  matched 
133 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

against  the  hourly  alteration  of  beauty  which  will 
grow  in  these  solitudes  between  this  and  Good- 
wood. Who  shall  blame  Hetty  for  her  venture 
into  the  unknown  glories  of  Bayswater,  if  our 
accomplished  and  informed  Mrs.  Sims-Bigg,  an 
instance  of  nice  balance  between  intellect  and 
propriety,  wilfully  prefers  Cromwell  Road  in  May 
to  her  own  bluebell  woods,  the  nightly  crush  to 
the  breathings  of  the  dusk  across  the  Sussex 
lawns  ? 

Hetty  has  finished  her  day's  labours  in  good 

time :  she  has  packed  her  box  in  a  flutter  of  awful 

joy,  I  conjecture,  at  the  Paradise  in  view ;  but  as 

I  sit  by  the  open  door  of  the  kitchen  in  the  first  of 

the  twilight,  I  see  her  go  down  the  garden,  and 

gather    a   bunch    of   flowers    to    take    with   her 

to-morrow,  something  of  the  country  to  have  near 

her  when  there  will  be  no  more  mossy  paths  to 

walk  in  between  the   daisy  edging  and  the  tall 

striped  tulips,  in  the  air  heavy  with  the  smell  of 

the  Brompton  stocks  and  the  syringa.     Ah,  Hetty, 

the  change  is  swift !    Before  the  country  posy  shall 

have  altogether  faded  in  your  little  attic  among 

the  chimney-pots,  a  spell  will  begin  to  work  ;  soon 

after  the    dust-cart  has   received    its   relics,   the 

country  will  be  dying  out  of  your  heart,  never  to 

return,  or  perhaps,  perhaps  to  return  only  as  the 

saddest  of  ghosts,  which  you  would  give  the  world 

to  forget.     Before  the  plane  trees  in  your  square 

shall  have  cast  their  sooty  skins  again  you  shall  be 

134 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

Cockney  from  the  sole  of  your  shoes  to  the  top- 
most curl  of  your  tousled  locks ;  but  never  shall 
your  small  spirit,  that  leaves  these  meadows,  God 
knows,  country-clean,  cast  off  the  smutch  of  the 
smoke  once  taken.  You  will  not  turn  back,  out  of 
all  the  thousands  that  have  gone  that  road.  You 
will  forget  the  fields,  the  silent  hillsides,  the  vast 
calm  of  evening  upon  the  garden  where  the  stocks 
and  the  syringa  grew. 


135 


XIII 

June  28. 

IF  there  are  days  when  an  idle  man  feels  con- 
vincingly the  reproach  of  his  empty  hands,  and 
knows  that  he  is  left  in  a  backward  eddy  while  the 
main  stream  of  the  world's  business  goes  by,  there 
are  others  which  lull  him  with  the  notion  of  a 
vaster  process,  the  set  of  a  master-current  sweeping 
alike  intents  and  achievements,  the  active  and  the 
folded  hands  towards  the  unguessed  deeps.  The 
passive  sentiment  is  naturally  stronger  as  middle 
age  draws  towards  the  outer  mark ;  as  youth 
recedes  and  our  trace  lengthens  behind  us,  we 
think  it  easier  to  produce  the  line  of  motion,  and 
to  make  some  guess  at  points  to  be  passed  through 
in  the  shorter  tract  that  remains.  For  this  reason, 
among  others,  the  past  becomes  a  thing  of  more 
and  more  consequence  to  our  scheme  of  things  as 
the  years  shorten.  In  my  own  case,  the  hours 
which  seem  to  justify  the  otiose  attitude  are,  for 
the  most  part,  touched  with  an  indolent  melancholy 
of  remembrance  and  an  anticipatory  emotion,  a 
sort  of  proleptic  pathos  only  relevant  if  the  line  of 

136 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

motion  already  described  may  be  understood  as 
producible  beyond  a  given  point. 

The  motions  of  the  mind  respond,  I  believe, 
more  readily  to  the  influence  of  hours  and  weather 
and  seasons  of  the  year  than  we  generally  conceive. 
The  days  when  I  bask  wholly  conscience-clean  in 
the  tide  of  pensive  idleness  are  the  first  two  or 
three  of  summer  warmth,  vivid  and  pure  after  rain, 
with  their  stores  of  sweet  air  and  moisture  un- 
touched. After  a  cloudless  week  in  June,  the 
earth  is  sunburned  and  staled,  the  sky  smirched  with 
grey  haze  and  close  airs.  When  dry  heat  increases 
day  by  day,  when  leaves  wilt  and  cattle  lie  close  in 
the  shade,  and  the  landscape  seems  to  endure, 
waiting  for  the  truce  of  the  dusk  ;  then  the  delicate 
spell  is  gone,  time  seems  to  drive  on  furiously, 
and  there  is  no  place  for  dreams  of  august  rhythms 
which  gather  one's  own  dilatory  paces  into  their 
scheme.  During  those  serene  days  of  early 
summer,  I  find  in  the  light  which  glitters  or  sleeps 
soft,  in  the  stir  or  pause  of  leaves,  even  in  the 
coming  and  going  of  moist  earthy  smells  from 
flag-grown  edges  of  the  pond,  an  intention,  an 
expressive  spirit  connected  with  all  the  old  June 
days  of  this  fashion  which  I  can  remember.  In 
my  sessions  under  the  beech-tree  shade,  my  mind 
retraces  with  a  curious  sagacity  past  hours  of  the 
like  light  and  weather,  and  presents  in  an  astonish- 
ingly vivid  and  actual  setting  the  very  motion  of 
thoughts  which  came  some  sunny  noon  twenty  or 
137 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

thirty  years  ago.  There  seems  to  be  no  dis- 
coverable method  or  sequence  in  the  phantasma- 
goria ;  it  may  be  that  some  hint  from  a  drowsing 
sense,  a  precise  degree  of  contrast  between  grey- 
green  foliage  and  grey-blue  sky,  or  that  insistent 
smell  from  the  pond-flags  stirs  some  particular 
store  of  memory  ;  but  in  general  there  is  no  trace- 
able reason  in  mechanics  for  the  selection  of 
scenes.  Why,  to-day,  should  I  see  a  line  of  tall, 
ragged  poplars,  a  composition  whose  awkward 
regularity  still  vaguely  irks  the  mind,  beyond  a 
broad  reach  of  shining  river,  with  an  eyot  white 
with  meadow-sweet,  and  a  boat  drifting  between 
the  sedge-beds  of  a  side  channel  with  lazily 
dipping  oars,  its  varnish  flashing  to  the  sun,  the 
red  parasol  in  the  stern  an  outrageous  spot  of 
colour  on  the  low  greens  of  the  river  valley  ?  I 
recall  my  solemn  scorn  of  that  irresponsible  ark,  as 
I  recall  my  envy  of  the  mowers  swinging  in  line 
through  the  bronze  green  of  the  meadows  beyond 
the  stream.  Is  it  the  smell  of  the  hay  now  making 
in  the  field  below  the  garden  which  brings  for  the 
next  vision  a  meadow  where  I  did  work,  both  with 
scythe  and  fork,  and  yet  did  not  find  any  consider- 
able peace  of  mind  ?  I  see  again,  clearer  than  the 
impressions  of  yesterday,  the  expanse  of  gold- 
green  under  the  overflowing  sunlight,  ridged  with 
the  grey  windrows,  shut  in  by  a  line  of  dark  elms, 
and  against  their  darkness  the  rose  of  a  girl's  face, 
half  the  field  away,  watched  with  jealous  devotion, 
138 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

with  a  boy's  desperate  caring  that  was  torn  by 
every  word  and  look  of  hers  to  the  workers  round 
her.  I  remember  the  wind  which  took  the  hay 
from  the  prong  as  it  was  shaken  out,  and  stirred 
the  elms  all  the  morning,  murmuring  a  language 
which  it  seemed  one  ought  to  understand ;  the 
lilac-grey  of  the  eastern  sky  beyond  the  elms  ;  the 
harsh  honey  of  the  elder  hanging  along  the  hedge, 
at  once  luscious  and  austere,  the  smell  which  every 
summer  mingles  with  the  hay  to  make  the 
strongest  of  all  the  spells  which  conjure  through 
the  outward  senses.  That  gust  must  have  gone 
by  when  I  found  myself  at  last  close  to  the  vision 
of  the  wild-rose  face,  the  arms  raised  to  put  back 
the  blown  hair  from  the  forehead,  the  smile  which 
lit  deep  in  her  eyes  before  it  began  to  crease  the 
cheek  and  lift  the  corners  of  the  mouth. 

Of  these  recoveries  of  the  past,  the  most  vivid 
have  for  their  scene  my  first  playgrounds  of 
Sandwell  stream  and  Allington  hills.  Some 
fifteen  years  from  my  first  recollection  of  those 
coasts  had  worked  a  heavy  change  upon  the 
face  of  the  country ;  the  lavender-fields  still 
gave  way  to  ghastly  quarters  of  mean  building ; 
one  by  one  the  familiar  woods  or  meadows 
showed  the  fatal  notice-board ;  a  new  nation 
swarmed  in  upon  the  barely  finished  streets 
and  staked-out  estates.  I  had  always  a  way  of 
making  up  eclectic  backgrounds  for  my  imagina- 
tions, and  for  a  time  those  Surrey  hills  and 

139 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

streams,  with  their  relics  of  fast-vanishing  pastoral 
beauty,  served  me  well  enough  as  scenery  for  my 
experiments  in  letters  and  arts.  For  two  or  three 
years  I  lived  in  a  make-believe  world  of  my  own, 
materialised  in  copy-book  epics  and  countless 
drawings  done  out  of  one's  own  head,  with  a 
terrible  waste  of  fancy ;  a  world  that  was  mediaeval 
and  Gothic,  as  many  another  lad's  must  have  been 
then,  shaped  under  a  medley  of  influences, — Pre- 
Raphaelite  pictures  and  the  later  cycle  of  Arthurian 
legend.  Such  things  as  the  designs  for  the 
Tennyson  "  Poems,"  by  Rossetti  and  Millais,  or  a 
Joan  of  Arc  by  Du  Maurier,  in  the  "  Cornhill," 
stirred  an  enthusiasm  which  even  yet  prevents  the 
full  judgment  due  to  all  modern  antiques.  After 
a  time  my  imaginative  works  in  laborious  pen-and- 
ink  were  considered  worthy  of  the  discipline  of 
drawing  from  the  cast  and  the  draped  model. 
Studies  in  a  life  class  in  a  dim  and  dusty  little 
cockpit  off  Newman  Street,  and  more  academic 
lessons  in  the  echoing  emptiness  of  a  national 
workshop,  served  to  show  that  the  stuff  I  had 
would  not  stand  the  shaping;  and  spite  of  the 
complementary  testimonials  of  two  of  my  guides, 
who  told  me  severally  that  "  I  could  draw,  but  had 
no  surface,"  and  that  "  I  had  ideas,  but  couldn't 
draw,"  I  abandoned  the  labours  of  the  Conte 
crayon  and  the  bread  pellet,  and  went  back  to 
Dr.  Ransome.  The  time  was  not  all  lost  j  at  the 
Museum  I  learned  at  least  the  inexorable  standard 
140 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

of  the  Theseus  and  the  metopes;  an  ivory,  or 
fourteenth-century  window-glass  at  Kensington 
was  matter  for  a  week's  imaginings.  On  my 
homeward  journey  day  by  day  I  could  idealise 
the  Green  Park  into  lawns  of  Camelot,  almost  as 
easily  as  in  early  morning  walks  I  made  the  groves 
of  Nonsuch  or  the  high-hedged  fields  by  Morden 
the  scenery  of  visions — crowded  epic  and  vivid 
fresco  colour — of  the  happy  prime.  Those  were 
the  days  of  my  service  to  Lystrenore,  Princess  of 
the  land  of  Arvall,  after  the  last  long  thoughts 
of  Barbara  des  Vceux  had  died,  and  before  those 
hay-time  visions  of  Letty  Ransome  had  found 
their  power.  They  were  not  altogether  unwhole- 
some ;  for,  after  all,  spite  of  drawings  done  out  of 
one's  head,  and  wastes  of  blank  verse,  one  was 
learning  certain  aspects  of  the  world  at  a  much 
greater  rate  than  one  was  putting  off  one's  fancies 
upon  it.  Yet  the  suburban-Arthurian  world 
presently  needed  a  fresher  air,  which  first  blew  in 
a  very  timely  manner  from  Cumberland  dales. 
The  change  from  our  cooped  country  to  the 
horizons  of  waste  moor  or  jagged  peaks,  the  fell 
purple-dark  under  the  streaming  cloud,  the  yew- 
hung  steeps  beneath  the  crag  wall  shimmering 
grey  and  vaporous  in  the  heat,  was  one  summer's 
piece  of  education  ;  and  if  I  at  once  forsook  the 
Idylls  for  the  Excursion,  the  conversion  was 
healthy  at  least  in  this,  that  it  led  to  no 
Derivative  essays ;  there  was  an  end  to  any  sort 
141 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

of   imitative  production,   pictorial  or  epic,  once 
for  all. 

By  a  subtle  and  particular  revenge  of  time,  my 
daylight  visions  of  the  past  have  more  and  more 
to  do  with  Oxford  as  the  years  go  by.  This 
morning  the  Warden  shows  me  a  letter  from 
Molly  Crofts,  full  of  the  doings  of  Commem,  and 
"the  most  brilliant  Encaenia  ever  known;"  and 
presently  I  am  away  in  the  dead  ends  of  Summer 
Term  thirty  years  ago,  and  find  myself  high  up 
in  the  gallery  of  the  Sheldonian,  close  to  one  of 
the  upper  windows,  looking  out  on  the  steep 
perspective  of  the  street,  over  whose  cobblestones 
winds  from  Balliol  an  absurd  little  foreshortened 
procession  in  scarlet  and  black.  Over  against 
me  one  of  the  statues  of  the  Clarendon  Building 
blocks  the  view,  its  joints  and  iron  cramps  and 
hollow  shadows  keenly  clear  on  the  white  stone 
which  glares  dazzlingly  against  the  opaque  violet- 
blue  of  the  sky.  Across  the  street  is  a  front  of 
mouldered  gables  and  mullions,  and  the  confused 
chimneys  and  roofs  of  the  town  ;  and  then,  asleep 
in  the  cloudless  noon,  the  swell  of  blue  hills,  hills 
without  a  name,  with  no  landmark  of  Botley 
poplars  or  Cumnor  clump,  a  mere  glimpse  of 
happy  places  in  country  silence  and  ease,  a 
prophecy  of  the  untravelled  world  awaiting  the 
feet  delivered  from  bondage.  For  at  that  time 
the  reverend  walls  were  a  prison-house ;  I  observed 
bounds  and  ordinances  with  impatient  exactitude, 
142 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

and  kept  the  rulers  at  immitigable  distance.  I 
had  fallen  into  an  interregnum  between  two  minds, 
a  restless  humour  of  discontent  which  fretted  at 
an  imagination  of  time  running  to  waste  in  sterile 
humanities,  and  made  me  envy  those  brown-faced 
mowers  swinging  through  the  meadows  along 
the  tow-path.  The  attitude  was  perhaps  partly 
due  to  chances  of  upbringing,  but  not  alto- 
gether. There  was  something  fundamental  in 
my  careful  solitude.  I  turned  out  not  long  since 
an  old  Conington's  JEneid  of  those  days,  with  a 
motto  I  had  written  on  the  fly-leaf — Solus  incedo — 
and  through  all  the  mewling  coxcombry  of  it,  I 
have  to  acknowledge  a  touch  of  fate.  There  are 
cases  in  which  one  recognises  with  mixed  feelings 
that  one  was  right  at  twenty,  after  all. 

So  on  that  summer  morning  I  turned  from  the 
procession  that  drew  towards  the  Twelve  Caesars, 
with  a  defiance  light-hearted  at  the  thought  of 
the  last  year  of  servitude  already  running  out, 
and  lifted  my  eyes  to  the  sleeping  hills  and  all 
that  lay  beyond. 

And  even  at  the  moment  I  think  the  spirit  of 
the  place  began  its  counter-stroke,  put  forth  a 
hint  of  the  power  it  held,  a  hardly  felt  touch  of 
the  pang  that  was  to  come  when  all  the  blue  hills 
were  travelled  and  despoiled,  and  we  return  to 
look  among  the  old  walls  for  the  grace  which  we 
held  so  lightly,  and  yet  was  perhaps  the  best  thing 
we  were  to  know. 

143 


LONEWOOD  ,  CORNER 

In  all  these  reconstitutions  of  mine — of  shining 
hayfields,  of  narrow  streets  in  the  sun,  black- 
shadowed  under  archways  and  crumbling  porticoes, 
of  a  slow-spinning  eddy  in  the  green  water  of  a 
summer  flood,  that  comes  round  the  edge  of  a 
reed-bed,  and  parts  the  flags  to  show  the  dreaming 
spires — what  defence  is  to  be  made  against  the 
censure  of  those  who  shake  solemn  heads  at  such 
necromancy,  charge  me  with  playing  with  shadows 
while  the  solid  hour  demands  my  energies  ? 
Nothing  to  their  purpose,  I  am  afraid ;  perhaps  I 
should  do  best  to  refuse  to  plead,  or  to  counter- 
charge— as  may  be  done  with  no  great  pains  and 
a  good  deal  of  effect — with  a  reflection  on  the 
qualities  of  those  belauded  activities.  When  once 
the  Warden  took  me  up  upon  the  matter  of  my 
too  pictorial  or  scenic  idiosyncrasy  of  thinking, 
I  read  him  one  or  two  places  in  Berkeley's 
Alciphron,  where  the  objects  of  sight  are  offered 
as  arbitrary  signs,  "  by  whose  sensible  intervention 
the  Author  of  Nature  constantly  explained!  him- 
self to  the  eyes  of  men : "  and  suggested  that  he 
and  a  good  many  others  might  on  their  part 
be  giving  a  quite  insufficient  attention  to  the 
language  those  signs  should  express,  and  might 
be  missing  intimations  which  mere  loiterers  like 
myself,  following  their  bent  of  note-taking,  or  even 
mere  vacant  reception,  happened  to  light  upon. 
I  would  not  exchange  for  fifty  of  the  Warden's 
Compensation  Theories  the  instinct  which  at 
144 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

seeming  random  marked  hours  and  places  on  the 
way,  and  brings  back  the  old  Junes  to  outshine 
the  blue  depths  seen  here  beyond  the  beech-tree 
shade,  so  persistently  and  exactly  that  at  times  I 
am  led  to  guess  at  some  relation  and  meaning 
beneath  the  careless-seeming  choice. 


145 


XIV 

July  3- 

MY  own  hay  grass  being  reduced  to  a  minute 
acreage — almost  a  matter  for  the  swap-hook  and 
wheelbarrow — I  am  obliged  to  take  my  seasonable 
pleasure  in  observing  other  men's  fields.  My 
neighbour  at  the  Folly  Farm  handles  his  forty 
acres  in  the  wholesale  modern  way ;  but  that  still 
leaves  us  the  smell  of  the  fresh-cut  swathe  and  the 
rising  stack,  and — with  a  little  shutting  of  the 
eyes — some  of  the  early  associations  of  haytime. 
The  mowing-machine,  having  finished  in  due  course 
the  cutting  of  the  smaller  fields,  the  Alder-Legs, 
Ox  Pasture,  and  Tanner's  Mead,  jolts  and  lurches 
into  the  Twelve  Acre,  the  last  and  largest  piece  of 
grass  on  the  farm,  meaning  to  lay  in  swathe  by 
nightfall,  if  no  mishap  betide,  as  much  as  once  on 
a  time  would  have  cost  two  good  scythemen  the 
better  part  of  a  week.  If  anything  is  to  hinder,  it 
will  be  some  fault  in  the  machine's  anatomy,  a 
split  pin  jarred  out,  or  a  screw  stripped  ;  there  is 
nothing  in  the  weather,  or  in  the  "  manners  "  of 
the  grass  (as  we  say)  to  offer  any  delay.  The 
meadow  shows  the  green-bronze  of  just-ripe 

146 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

herbage,  the  fine  broken  colour  made  by  the  red- 
browns  and  greys  of  the  seed-heads  powdered  over 
the  lush  green  bottom.  The  long  slope  is  bright 
with  buttercup,  Ragged-Robin,  and  rusty  sorrel — 
gayer  to  the  eye  than  to  the  moralising  mind — 
and  rolls  in  ceaseless  waves  like  a  sea  under  the 
south-west  breeze,  breaking  into  foam  along  the 
shore  where  the  swaying  ox-eyes  and  hemlock  line 
the  hedge.  The  clouds  are  "high"  enough  and 
"  hard  "  enough  to  satisfy  the  country  prognostic 
of  set-fair  weather ;  the  sun  rarely  breaks  through 
their  serried  lines  or  the  vault  of  fine-spun  vapour 
under  which  they  sail,  but  fills  the  whole  sky  with 
a  diffused  fire,  too  broad  and  bright  for  the  eyes 
without  the  shading  hand,  and  pours  an  almost 
shadowless  daylight  on  the  fields. 

When  I  went  into  the  meadow  on  my  round  of 
the  fields  this  morning,  the  mowing-machine,  gay 
from  the  works  in  blue  and  scarlet  paint,  the  gold- 
leaf  still  fresh  on  the  lettering  of  its  patents  and 
prize  medals,  was  receiving  the  last  touches  with 
the  oiler  and  cotton-waste  due  to  the  new  toy. 
The  driver  gets  up  on  the  seat,  the  horses  answer 
the  jerk  of  the  reins  and  the  "  Git  bahk  /  "  with  a 
sedate  half-turn,  and  the  rattling  engine  plunges 
into  the  grass.  But  before  it  can  cut  its  first  lane 
down  the  slope,  the  way  has  been  prepared  for  it 
by  an  older  tool.  Just  as  the  machine  got  under 
weigh,  old  Abram  Branch,  who  has  cleared  a 
width  for  the  horses  all  round  the  hedge-sides  with 
147 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

the  scythe,  came  up  to  the  corner  where  I  was 
standing,   and   stood  to  watch   his    successor  at 
work.      Small  and  bent  and  brown,  hardly  a  day 
older  in  all  the  years  the  parish  has  known  him, 
every  haytime  he  appears  from  somewhere  "  along 
up'ards  " — he  rarely  owns  a  more  precise  domicile 
than  that — with  his  kettle  and  a  few  belongings  in 
a  sack  over  one  shoulder,  and  his  treasured  scythe, 
its   edge   carefully   guarded  by   its   grooved   and 
warped  hazel-rod,  over  the  other,  and  resumes  his 
ancient  trade.     The  glory  of  the  scythe  departed, 
the  skilled  mower  ceased  hereabouts  some  twenty 
years  ago  ;  the  great  days  of  Herculean  work  and 
commensurate  beer  are  over.     But  there  is  still  a 
remnant  left ;   the  old  craft  still  holds,  and  will 
perhaps  continue  to  hold  the  lower  place  to  which 
it  so  quickly  fell.     There  is  always  the  strip  to  be 
cleared   for   the   machine's   first  sally ;   there  are 
rough  and  uneven  pieces  where  the  rigid  cutter 
cannot   go,  to   call  for  the  more  adaptable  tool. 
Old  Branch,  after  he  has  mowed  the  avenue  round 
the  twelve-acre,  has  the  next  field  all  to  himself,  a 
narrow  strip   between  two   shaws,  whose   humpy 
brows  and  wet  hollows  would  capsize  the  machine 
if  it  ventured  upon  them.     "  They  got  to  come  to 
me,  ye  see,"  says  Abram,  as  he  knocks  out  his 
pipe,  and  sets  about  sharpening  his  blade  for  the 
thistles    and    rushes,    looking    a  little   wistfully, 
perhaps,  at  the  even  depth  of  the  grass  with  its 
thick   moist  bottom,  which  is  not  for  him.      He 
148 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

watches  the  machine  as  it  comes  whirring  down 
the  field,  and  as  he  moves  off  towards  his  own 
province  repeats  with  a  jerk  of  the  head  towards 
the  supplanter :  "  Pieces  where  he  can't  go,  they 
wants  the  scythe  to  'em ;  and  then,  ye  see,  they 
got  to  come  to  me? 

I  preferred  to  follow  the  craftsman  to  his  waste 
corner  and  watch  the  historic  rather  than  the 
present  mode.  There  will  be  time  and  to  spare 
this  next  thirty  years  to  observe  the  development 
of  mechanism  ever  reducing  the  human  element  in 
labour  to  lower  terms  ;  the  motor-mower  and  the 
electric  elevator  will  presently  demand  attention  in 
ways  not  to  be  ignored  ;  but  the  chance  of  watching 
the  survival  of  a  vanishing  art,  the  height  of  an 
accumulated  tradition  of  skill,  that  may  die  with- 
out an  heir  to-morrow,  is  by  all  arguments  of  good 
economy  a  thing  to  be  taken  when  it  comes.  I 
perched  myself  on  the  heave-gate  between  the 
two  fields  ;  and  there,  under  the  crest  of  the  slope 
and  away  to  the  windward,  the  restless  burr  of  the 
link  and  pinion  scarcely  reached  me ;  what  I  heard 
was  the  "sound  to  rout  the  brood  of  cares,"  the 
crisp  rustle  and  swish  of  the  steel,  an  even  pulse  of 
sound,  after  Nature's  own  pattern  both  in  rhythm 
and  tone,  in  tune  with  the  voices  of  winds  and 
waters  ;  and  yet,  with  its  pause  and  ictus,  a  thing 
of  art  in  its  own  way  as  complete  and  elaborate  as 
a  hexameter.  For  the  eye's  pleasure  there  is  the 
balanced  turn  and  sway  of  the  body,  the  shifting  of 
149 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

the  light  on  the  muscles  of  the  sunburnt  arms,  the 
easy  grace  of  the  man's  knack,  almost  without 
effort,  it  seems  to  the  onlooker  here  at  the  barway 
under  the  dog-rose  hedge.  But  the  grass  is  rank 
and  wiry,  and  every  time  that  the  swathe  is 
finished  at  the  hedgeside,  and  sometimes  before  it 
is  half  done,  the  scythe  must  be  sharpened.  There 
is  a  trick  in  the  handling  of  the  rubber  which  is 
not  to  be  picked  up  in  a  day  ;  and  the  choice  of 
the  stone,  the  matching  of  its  grain  and  hardness 
with  the  temper  of  the  steel  is  a  gift  of  experience. 
Old  Abram  touches  up  his  blade  delicately,  as  if 
he  loved  it.  Its  edge  is  worn  down  in  a  wavy  line 
to  within  an  inch  or  so  of  the  rib  at  the  back ;  it 
is  a  very  old  blade,  he  says  ;  you  can't  get  new 
metal  like  that  now.  The  handle  of  the  scythe, 
worm-eaten  as  all  old  hazel  is  apt  to  be,  and 
visibly  "tender"  at  the  head,  is  also  a  survival 
from  more  painstaking  days,  its  curves  and  angles 
full  and  ample ;  the  new  shafts  which  hang  out- 
side the  country  ironmongers'  doors  when  haytime 
comes  round  approach  more  and  more  to  the 
slovenly  simplicity  of  the  straight  line.  Knowledge 
such  as  this,  and  some  understanding  of  the  varied 
"  hang  "  of  the  blade  and  its  angle  with  the  shaft, 
according  to  the  user's  idiosyncrasy  and  the  kind 
of  work  it  is  meant  to  do,  the  several  qualities  of 
rivetted  and  cast  backs,  the  way  to  measure  off  the 
places  for  the  two  "  doles  "  or  grips  on  the  sneath, 
any  one  might  learn  from  Abram  as  he  rests  a 
150 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

minute  between  sharping-up  and  starting  again  on 
the  new  swathe.  But  to  know  the  beauty  of  the 
tool  one  must  learn  to  handle  it,  to  master  the  way 
in  which  the  stroke  runs,  circling  in  the  curve  of 
the  blade,  but  dragged  a  little  inwards  at  the 
finish ;  one  must  acquire  the  instinctive  knack  of 
hitting  off  the  distance  between  the  edge  and  the 
ground,  according  to  the  quality  and  state  of  the 
grass,  and  the  way  to  make  the  point  and  the  heel 
both  do  their  proper  work  in  the  stroke.  There  is 
a  degree  in  even  an  amateur's  skill  when  the 
standing  grass,  rustling  above  its  dew-drenched 
bottom,  calls  to  the  mower  much  as  the  south-west 
ripple  across  the  stream  calls  to  the  fly-fisher,  and 
when  the  habit  and  mastery  of  the  scythe  are  a 
pleasure  certainly  comparable  to  that  in  the 
control  of  the  rod.  There  are  not  wanting  mis- 
haps to  help  out  the  parallel ;  the  hidden  mole-hill 
to  bury  the  point  of  the  blade  in,  the  bit  of  stone 
in  the  grass  which  tinkles  along  the  steel  and 
takes  off  all  the  edge  at  a  stroke  are  comparable  to 
the  alder-twig,  the  knot  on  the  flowering  rush 
which  wait  for  the  angler's  backward  cast.  It  is 
the  simplicity  of  the  scythe,  the  product,  perfected 
and  fixed,  of  the  early  wisdom  of  the  world,  and  its 
adaptableness  to  varying  conditions,  that  make  it 
an  artist's  instrument.  "  He,"  says  old  Branch, 
nodding  towards  the  engine  droning  beyond  the 
hedge,  "  he's  terrified  by  they  emmet-heaps  ;  and 
if  he  comes  to  a  stump  or  a  dick,  he's  done.  Why, 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

us  mowers,  we  can  cut  right  round  a  partridge- 
nest,  and  never  set  her  off."  This,  maybe,  is  a 
flourish,  fellow  to  the  classic  ploughman's  boast 
that  he  could  draw  his  furrow  straight  enough  to 
put  out  a  worm's  eye ;  but  it  contains  a  truth. 

The  next  time  that  Abram  mowed  up  to  the 
hedge,  I  put  my  coat  on  the  gate,  and  took  the 
scythe  from  him  for  a  turn  across  the  field.  I 
found  that  the  old  knack,  untried  for  a  good  many 
years,  still  served  me  tolerably,  and  with  Abram 
watching  me  from  the  hedge,  a  little  solicitous, 
perhaps,  for  his  favourite  in  alien  hands,  I  made 
fair  practice,  only  once  slicing  the  sod  and  leaving 
two  or  three  ragged-bitten  tufts  behind  me.  But 
before  I  was  halfway  across  the  field,  the  unused 
muscles  were  calling  for  caution,  and  after  a  few 
more  strokes,  in  a  posture  sufficiently  upright  to 
have  satisfied  even  Cobbett's  requirements,  when 
he  saw  the  old  man  mowing  short  grass  at  East 
Everley,  I  handed  the  tool  back  to  its  owner,  and 
watched  him  go  swinging,  taking  a  swathe  a  foot 
wider  than  mine,  tirelessly  across  the  field.  I  went 
back  to  the  gate  again  and  put  on  my  coat,  think- 
ing of  several  ways  in  which  a  training  like  Abram's, 
with  its  resultant  amazingly  tough  fibre  at  seventy 
odd,  might  be  serviceable  to  the  country,  a  training 
for  which  half-hours  of  slouching  drill  in  the  school 
yard,  or  even  fortnight  volunteer  camps  are  not  a 
complete  substitute.  And  once  more  I  conjectured 
how  long  a  scientific  age  will  continue  to  think  it 
152 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 


can  obtain  its  ideals  without  paying  Fate  a  penny 
for  the  accommodation. 

The  next  time  that  Abram  stopped  to  sharp-up, 
he  accompanied  the  clink  of  his  whetstone  with 
more  criticism  of  the  machine,  which  had  been 
silent  for  some  time,  save  for  sounds  of  hammering 
and  a  forcible  discussion  between  the  driver  and 
the  man  who  had  been  sharpening  the  spare  cutter 
by  the  upper  gate.  "I  call  this  ivork"  says 
Abram ;  "  makes  a  man  o'  ye,  I  reckon.  But 
sittin'  all  day  like  that  chap  over  there,  all  of  a 
heap,  on  a  seat  that  pretty  nigh  shakes  the  innards 
out  o'  ye,  and  just  sayin'  '  Come  up ! '  and  '  Git 
back' " 

The  aposiopesis  is  eloquent ;  he  slips  back  the 
rubber  into  its  sling,  and  bends  to  his  swathe 
again.  What  ought  I  to  say  to  him,  oh  hierarchs 
of  progress,  the  next  time  that  he  works  his  way 
to  the  hedge,  wipes  the  sweat  out  of  his  eyes,  and 
stands  a  minute  to  take  the  stiffness  out  of  his 
back  ?  Shall  I  reprove  his  barbarous  economics, 
vindicate  to  him  the  gifts  of  science  and  the  march 
of  mind,  tell  him  that  the  old  threat  of  TJ/JEVOC 
dfififfttg  is  blessedly  fulfilled  in  that  jolted  figure 
perched  on  the  racketing  machine  ?  Or  shall  I 
leave  him  in  solitary  enjoyment  of  his  theory  that 
every  tool  has  two  ends,  one  working  on  the 
matter,  the  other  on  the  man  ?  I  think  I  will  be 
indulgent  to  the  myth  which  his  faith  implies,  that 
somewhere  in  the  tract  between  the  helpless  first 
153 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

childhood  of  the  world  and  its  old  age,  a  race  of 
grown  men,  capable  of  all  heights  and  depths  of 
human  grace  and  strength,  understanding  by 
heaven-sent  vision  precisely  how  far  labour  may 
be  saved  without  losing  the  labourer,  forged  the 
crooked  scythe  the  old  man  wields  so  well. 


154 


XV 


July  s- 

FULL  summer,  with  keen  sunlight  and  furnace-air 
and  grey-blue  sky,  has  come  all  at  once,  without 
prelude,  as  it  seems  to  do  in  all  these  later  years ; 
and  I  am  back  again  in  the  long  mornings  in  my 
old  place  under  the  cool  dark  of  the  beech  tree, 
reading  the  old  books  over,  smelling  the  grass  and 
mould  as  they  reek  to  the  sun,  and  looking  off  now 
and  again  to  watch  the  swifts  whirl  across  the  sky, 
the  sheep  in  the  meadow  shift  and  pack  themselves 
into  the  shadow  as  it  narrows  along  the  elm-hung 
hedge,  or  the  clouds  draw  overhead,  burning  and 
wasting  as  they  go,  through  the  dazzling  loop- 
holes of  the  leaves.  Yesterday  there  were  signs 
of  thunder  working  up  out  of  the  south-east,  the 
watching  of  whose  growth  became  more  of  the 
morning's  work  than  my  book.  From  the  first 
beginnings  which  I  can  remember,  my  temper  has 
always  answered  with  an  instinctive  restlessness 
to  the  tense  atmosphere  of  brewing  storm ;  but 
though  the  old  anxiety  does  not  seem  to  lose  much 
of  its  effect  under  lapse  of  time,  I  am  able  to  find 
a  sort  of  repose  in  the  vast  unity  of  purpose,  the 
155 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

tremendous  strategy  of  the  gathered  power.  I 
had  been  reading  Lucretius,  and  when  the  first  low 
roll  of  thunder  settled  any  doubt  there  might  be 
as  to  the  meaning  of  the  grey  sheeted  vapour 
barred  with  lean  black  streaks,  I  turned  to  those 
theories  of  storms  in  the  sixth  book.  To  us  who 
know  such  a  vast  deal  better,  all  those  contrivances 
of  clouds  butting  against  each  other  or  shouldering 
sidelong,  and  of  the  explosive  winds  pent  within 
them,  seem  sad  stuff  indeed  ;  and  one  takes  refuge 
in  the  poetry  of  the  descriptions.  To  my  fancy, 
all  Lucretius'  science  seems  curiously  offhand  and 
accidental ;  it  looks  as  if  he  had  sat  down,  gnawed 
his  stylus,  and  evolved  there  and  then  the  laboured 
explanations  which  he  had  never  thought  of  before, 
or,  where  he  copies  Epicurus,  had  chosen  haphazard 
among  his  master's  light-hearted  alternatives. 
The  Warden,  I  believe,  once  contemplated  a  selec- 
tion, which  would  leave  out  the  whole  of  Memmius' 
Mangnall,  as  he  called  it,  and  take  only  the  in- 
spired places.  In  the  descriptive  passages  there 
are,  besides  the  general  beauty  of  form  and  colour, 
here  and  there  fine  particularities  of  detail,  which 
in  Latin  verse  always,  I  think,  strike  us  as  a  little 
surprising.  Their  unexpectedness  may  be  partly 
due  to  schoolboy  reminiscences  of  the  ground-out 
quantum  of  nonsense  lines  (was  there  ever  a 
greater  literary  crime  than  giving  Virgil  to  the 
average  fourth-form  boy  ? )  ;  but  in  the  main  it  is 
by  force  of  contrast  with  the  customary  looseness 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

and  convention  of  the  methods  of  description  that 
the  rare  instances  of  close  direct  portraiture  tell  as 
they  do.  After  "unda  horrescit,"  "nox  polum 
occupat,"  and  the  like,  Virgil's  "  ignea  rima  micans 
percurrit " — which  is  very  near  Turner's  lightning, 
and  not  the  least  like  the  toasting-forks  and  zig- 
zags of  popular  art — comes  with  a  peculiar  vivid- 
ness of  reality.  Here  in  Lucretius  that — 

"  taetra  nimborum  nocte  coorta 
Impendent  atrae  formidinis  or  a  superne" 

and — 

"  Aut  ubi  per  magnos  mentis  cumulata  videbis 
Insuper  esse  aliis  alia  atque  urguere  superne 
In  stations  locata  sepultis  undique  ventis^" 

and — 

"  Devolet  in  terram  liquidi  color  aureus  ignis," 

are  pieces  of  actual  observation,  as  direct  a  seizure 
of  Nature  as  Wordsworth's,  as  workmanlike,  even, 
as  Crabbe's.  We  did  not  exhaust  all  the  matter, 
after  all,  in  the  texts  we  learned  at  school. 

After  muttering  for  an  hour  along  the  southern 
horizon,  the  thunder  drew  by  on  an  easterly  slant 
of  wind,  and  the  rest  of  the  day  was  all  clear  sun 
and  cool  airs  blowing  from  regions  fresh-washed 
by  the  distant  storm.  In  the  afternoon  the 
Warden  came  in,  and  we  sat  on  the  lawn  and 
talked  philosophy  and  Latin  verse,  as  we  do  now 
and  then,  beginning  this  time  from  my  morning's 
place  in  Lucretius.  Men  who  have  "  kept  up  their 
classics  "  are  not  so  common  hereabouts  that  we 
157 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

often  fail,  when  we  get  together  under  the  beechen 
shade  or  in  the  Warden's  Green  Parlour,  secure 
from  the  outer  world,  to  drift  upon  the  old  subjects. 
This  is  only  when  we  are  quite  by  ourselves ; 
inasmuch  as  our  friends  of  the  neighbourhood,  for 
good  reasons  of  their  own,  refuse  to  believe  that 
any  one  can  be  serious  or  quite  honest  in  caring 
for  the  things  he  was  taught  at  school.  There  is 
no  harm  in  the  arrangement ;  before  the  outer 
circle  we  discuss  Betty  Yarborough-Greenhalgh's 
engagement,  or  our  friend  Sims-Bigg's  new  motor- 
car with,  I  venture  to  think,  quite  a  tolerable  grace  ; 
and  we  retire  at  the  proper  conjunctions  to  our 
private  whims,  to  noster  amor  Libethrides,  with 
perhaps  an  added  pleasure  in  the  return.  It  is  a 
pleasure  which  runs,  I  fear,  little  chance  of  being 
profaned  by  crowds  in  any  time  within  our  scope. 
I  came  across  a  place  in  Ste.  Beuve  lately,  where 
he  speaks  of  the  impossibility  of  getting  his 
audience  to  listen  to  the  classics,  in  the  severer 
sense  :  he  will  try  what  he  can  do  with  the  older 
Pliny.  If  that  was  so,  there  and  then,  where  shall 
we  say  that  we  stand  to-day  ? 

The  Warden  grumbles  at  the  small  proportion 
of  high  poetry  in  Lucretius — "all  smothered  in 
absolutely  drivelling  physiology :  not  one  line  in 
fifty  that  could  stand  by  itself" — and  so  on,  in  his 
usual  forceful  way.  He  maintains  that  there  is 
room  and  to  spare  for  his  manner  of  presenting 
things  in  gross ;  we  have  overdone  the  impartial 
158 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

and  judicial  attitude  ;  with  our  feeble  means  of 
expression,  a  thoroughly  one-sided  statement  is 
often  the  only  way  to  give  the  force  of  certain 
qualities.  He  thinks  it  is  a  pity  that  our  present 
scientific  hierarchs  don't  embody  their  discoveries 
in  verse.  They  haven't  even  the  chance  of  eternal 
poetry  to  buoy  up  their  exploded  theories  two 
thousand  years  hence.  They,  who  are  so  ready 
with  the  teaching  of  billions  of  years,  won't  look 
at  the  lessons  of  a  few  centuries,  results  almost 
under  their  very  noses  ;  they  seem  to  think  that 
somehow  in  the  last  fifty  years  or  so  we  have  got 
beyond  the  relative  state  of  knowledge,  and  that 
since  they  learned  to  spell  everything  is  positive. 
Lucretius  was  just  as  cocksure ;  but  we  have 
something  to  forgive  him  for. 

I  have  a  long-kept  theory  of  my  own,  that  one 
sure  test  of  a  writer's  claim  to  be  heard  is  his 
possessing  a  perfectly  individual  and  unmistakable 
character  and  style.  This  works  out,  if  any  one 
will  take  the  trouble  to  try  it  conscientiously,  with 
curious  consistency  and  far-reaching  results.  If 
you  will  only  have  dealings  with  works  whose 
authors  could  not  possibly  have  been  some  one 
else,  the  amount  of  impersonal  systems  and  histories 
and  criticism  "expressed,"  as  the  reviewers  say, 
"in  direct  and  lucid  English,"  well  ordered  and 
entirely  common,  with  the  man's  soul  and  humour 
only  coming  through  by  means  of  negatives  and 
uncomely  lapses ;  the  amount,  I  say,  of  this 
159 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

"  every-gentleman's-library  "  literature  from  which 
you  will  be  delivered  is  a  very  considerable  thing. 
In  the  classics,  I  take  Lucretius  to  be  a  notable 
instance  of  the  theory ;  because  the  personal  ex- 
pression seems  to  come  and  go  pretty  nearly  in 
alternation,  accordingly  as  he  draws  deep-chested 
breath  in  an  exordium  or  illustration,  or  bites  his 
nails  over  the  business  of  shoving  hooked  atoms 
into  unlikely  places,  or  pretending  it  is  all  fair  to 
give  his  cosmos,  ruining  along  the  illimitable  inane, 
a  little  jog  to  make  its  parallel  lines  of  motion 
meet  in  a  procreant  clash.  I  produce  this  theory 
of  mine,  not  for  the  first  time,  perhaps ;  the 
Warden  proceeds,  as  he  has  done  before,  to  fit  it 
into  a  corner  of  a  roomier  scheme  of  his  own.  He 
thinks  that  we  can  judge  which  philosophies  and 
systems  are  in  main  intent  and  meaning  true,  and 
which  are  false  from  the  bottom,  by  the  test  of 
their  indirectness  of  expression.  All  the  great 
true  books  are  in  oblique  oration,  by  dialogue, 
fable  and  myth,  essays,  letters,  drama.  Whenever 
a  man  sits  down  to  give  us  his  cosmogony  direct 
and  complete,  ground-plan  and  section,  with  data 
and  appendices,  his  impersonal  system  and  principia 
— well,  he  produces  just  "  a  standard  work  of  refer- 
ence." Plato  and  Aristotle  are,  of  course,  the  two 
types  which  will  always  divide  the  world  ;  and  one 
may  sort  out  their  followers  at  one's  leisure. 
You  will  find,  says  the  Warden,  that  they  hang 
together,  and  show  their  relationship  quite  curiously, 

1 60 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

as  a  general  thing;  look,  for  instance,  at  Mon- 
taigne's literary  likings.  Sometimes  you  may  have 
to  read  a  man  for  just  everything  he  didn't  mean  : 
Lucretius,  for  instance,  again.  One  may  leave 
alone  all  those  miserable  guesses  about  the  size 
of  the  sun,  and  simple  oversights  about  penetra- 
bility of  matter,  and  so  on  ;  and  read  "  ^Eneadum 
genetrix  "  for  the  fiftieth  time,  and  never  be  tired 
of  it. 

I  tried  back  to  my  own  theory  of  the  patent- 
mark  of  personal  expression  ;  that  it  all  depends 
upon  whether  one  looks  at  the  world  and  life  as  a 
thing  per  se,  sufficiently  absorbing  in  its  own  laws 
and  politics,  or  only  as  a  symbol  of  something  else, 
one  vast  complex  mythus,  as  Coleridge  says.  Of 
course,  if  a  man  thinks  he  sees  reflections  of  a 
finer  light,  or  hears  a  strange  tongue,  he'll  want 
to  get  something  of  the  mythical  into  his  work  ; 
to  indicate,  like  a  good  sketcher,  instead  of  trying 
to  realise  like  a  mere  copyist.  Besides,  there  are 
his  own  eyes  to  be  thought  of ;  he  has  to  look  for 
reflections,  like  Perseus  with  the  Gorgon,  not  the 
direct  light. 

The  Warden  acquiesced,  with  less  qualification 
than  I  am  accustomed  to,  and  our  conference  did 
not  go  very  much  farther  on  that  point.  We  know 
each  other  well  enough  to  divine  instinctively  a 
seasonable  silence ;  and  for  half  an  hour,  may  be, 
the  Warden  made  pencil  notes  which,  I  imagine, 
bore  upon  the  great  Theory,  and  I  turned  back  to 
161  M 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

my  Lucretius  again.  I  soon  fell  into  that  desultory 
state  of  apprehension  in  which  one  finds  that  a 
sentence  needs  looking  at  twice,  and  gaps  of  irre- 
levance lengthen  down  the  page  :  I  don't  mean  the 
bodily  dropping-off,  rational  enough  on  a  summer 
afternoon  when  the  brain  has  been  wholesomely 
exercised  after  lunch,  but  a  lighter  and  more 
spiritual  occultation,  due  in  this  case,  I  think,  to 
the  surpassing  goodness  of  the  day,  the  pure 
luxury  of  the  air  and  light  and  garden-smells,  and 
shapes  of  trees  and  hills,  and  colours  of  the  sky, 
which  fairly  out-faced  the  crooked  signs  on  the 
paper  and  all  their  appeal.  I  gave  it  up  at  last, 
observing  that  the  Warden's  pencil  had  lapsed, 
and  his  notebook  lay  upon  the  grass;  and  so  I 
sat  for  a  long  while  existing  in  the  deep  green 
shadow,  imbibing  the  far-off  light  on  the  woods, 
and  the  rich  vapours  from  grass  and  leaves  and 
earth,  vastly  idle,  and  flattering  myself  that  for 
once  I  was  taking  in,  to  my  capacity,  some  little 
part  of  the  immensity  of  good  things  which 
we  are  mostly  too  busy  to  receive,  and  storing 
something  to  remain,  I  hope,  for  less  liberal 
days. 

Yesterday  was  beyond  question  a  day  of  the 
year — such  a  day  as  comes  but  once  or  twice  in  a 
summer,  and  is  not  immeasurably  removed  from 
those  days  of  a  lifetime  which  all  men  ought  to 
have  down  in  their  archives.  Its  beauty  lay  in 
fine  shades  of  difference,  that  will  not  go  into 

162 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

words.  If  one  speaks  of  a  perfect  tempering  of 
heat,  light,  wind :  of  vivid  sky  whose  tender  blue 
is  by  itself  a  still-fresh  pleasure  ;  of  fields  of 
pearly  vapour  low  down  towards  the  horizon  above 
the  violet  bloom  of  the  hills  ;  of  trees,  shapes  of 
massive  sheen  and  hollow  blackness  ;  of  perfume 
that  suggests  a  hundred  sweets  of  the  fields  or  the 
garden  and  goes  before  the  nostril  can  for  sure 
discern  bean-flower  or  mignonette  or  clover — why, 
that  means  nothing  in  the  world  to  a  man  who 
has  not  the  key  to  it  all,  and  the  man  who  has 
it  will  not  thank  you  for  telling  him.  It  is  all  fine 
and  restrained  and  evanescent ;  and  you  shall  find 
plenty  of  people  proof  against  its  spell.  I  fear 
that  most  of  the  company  that  went  from  the 
village  yesterday  on  their  annual  excursion  did 
not  think  much  of  it.  Mr.  Myram — so  his  wife 
told  me  when  I  was  down  in  the  village  this 
morning — took  his  top  coat  and  umbrella  with 
him  when  he  started  at  5  a.m.  for  the  Crystal 
Palace  ;  it  looked  unsettled-like,  he  reckoned  ;  but 
he  was  inside  the  Palace  all  the  day,  listening  to 
the  great  Brass  Band  Contest.  That  was  lovely, 
he  said ;  sixty-nine  bands  a-playing  the  same 
selection  one  after  the  other  between  eleven  o'clock 
and  six  ;  that's  what  he  calls  music,  and  chance  it, 
he  says.  Beats  him,  how  the  judges  could  keep  it 
all  in  their  heads,  he  says,  but  he  'spects  they  put 
down  every  mistake,  directly  they  makes  it.  ... 
To-day  the  weather  is  settled  enough,  the  shining 

163 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

• 

grass  is  mown,  the  brassy  heat  chokes  the  sky 
with  haze  ;  the  light  is  raw  and  glaring.  Down  in 
the  village,  where  the  smell  of  the  brickworks 
tempers  a  suggestion  of  the  effluent  from  the 
sewage-field,  and  a  pettish  wind  whirls  an  eddy  of 
dust  and  papers  into  one's  eyes  at  the  street 
corners,  walks  Myram  expansive  in  an  eighteen- 
penny  Panama  hat  and  a  white  waistcoat  which 
already  bears  the  print  of  sweating  thumbs. 
"  Ah ! "  says  Myram,  and  Myram's  circle  at  the 
eleven  o'clock  beer,  "  something  like  summer  at 
last,  and  hope  it's  going  to  last,  too !  "  The  twist 
is  altogether  in  Myram's  vein  of  humour.  I  came, 
I  confess,  on  the  identical  conceit  in  Sidney's 
"  Arcadia "  the  other  day ;  but  somehow  in 
Myram's  mouth  it  does  not  seem  to  be  in  the 
right  line  of  descent.  Or  is  the  fault  mine,  some 
uncandid  difference  warping  my  judgment  of  the 
contemporary  wit  ? 

It  would  perhaps  be  well  if  I  only  differed  from 
our  Alpheus  in  such  matters  of  taste  as  wit  and 
the  weather.  We  are  sundered  by  a  whole  sphere 
of  subjects  concerning  which  I  clearly  apprehend 
that  he  is  safe  to  get  his  way.  He  stands  for 
Progress,  for  Forward  Policies,  for  the  blessings  of 
Science,  for  Education,  in  a  manner  which  I  think 
some  better  known  professors  of  the  faith  might 
study  with  advantage  to  us  all.  I  admire,  in  the 
primary  sense  of  the  word,  a  dozen  distinctive 
qualities  which  make  him  in  type  the  master  of 

164 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

the  world — a  gift  of  dealing  with  figures  which  I 
cannot  sufficiently  respect,  a  mind  undisturbed  by 
the  slightest  sense  of  beauty  or  humour  in  life,  by 
the  least  consciousness  of  baffling  incommensurable 
things  just  outside  our  scale  ;  a  serviceable  integrity 
which  seems  to  preserve  him  conscience-clean  in 
the  muddy  walks  of  local  government  and  expansive 
trade.  If  his  foot  be  fated  to  slide,  it  will  be  in 
the  dim  gyres  of  municipal  opportunity.  There  is 
in  the  management  of  our  little  drains  and  paths  a 
riddle,  a  mystery  of  iniquity  which  confounds  the 
merely  external  critic.  In  the  business  there 
seems  to  be  a  mesmeric  force,  sufficient  not  only 
to  charm  aspiring  units  such  as  Myram,  but  to 
make  whole  bodies  of  comparatively  cultured 
people,  individually  most  amiable  and  upright 
props  of  rural  society,  to  become  accomplices  in 
obscure  obstruction  and  delay,  impenetrable  silences, 
whiffs  of  ill  breath  suggesting  buried  crimes,  the 
dragging,  leaden  inertia  of  adjournment  and  the 
slumbrous  brain.  I  read  in  the  county  journal 
week  by  week  the  proceedings  of  the  various 
bodies  who  keep  house  for  us,  and  I  measure  the 
worth  of  all  their  energies,  their  loans  and  Govern- 
ment inquiries,  their  election  fights  and  Rate- 
payers' Defence  Societies,  their  recriminating 
committee  meetings  and  letters  to  the  papers,  by 
the  undisturbed  persistence  of  an  open  drain  from 
the  cottages  at  Tillman's  Green,  whose  stench  has 
made  the  highway  hold  its  nose  summer  by 
165 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

summer  for  eighteen  years  of  my  recollection,  and 
seems  to  exist  as  a  symbol  of  subtler  taints  in 
the  air. 

I  know  very  well  that  the  future  lies  with  friend 
Myram  and  his  kind.  Indeed,  I  do  not  know 
what  defence  I  should  make,  if  he  took  the  trouble 
to  compare  the  fruits  of  his  work  and  mine — his 
thriving  days,  his  control  of  labour  and  handling 
of  the  national  life,  his  solid  worth  and  standing, 
his  place  in  the  world  hacked  out  for  himself: 
against  all  this  to  set  my  imponderable  self  and 
works  were  in  all  ways  impertinent.  In  the  village 
polity  which  I  sometimes  forecast,  such  idlers  as  I 
and  the  Warden — after  several  well-meant  chances 
given  us  and  incorrigibly  made  light  of — will  be 
extinguished  for  the  good  of  a  serious  common- 
weal ;  and  I  doubt  if  either  of  us  would  under 
those  conditions  care  to  appeal  against  the  sentence. 
We  should  have  had  our  good  and  our  evil  things 
in  our  own  way ;  we  happened  to  have  learned  the 
etymologic  sense  of  the  word  "  fastidious,"  we  had 
not  the  brave  digestions  of  the  Myram  breed,  and 
we  missed  the  charm  of  wearing  dirty  white  waist- 
coats and  spats,  and  living  in  a  terra-cotta  villa 
with  cement  lions  at  the  steps,  of  relishing  the 
whiff  from  the  main  drain,  and  those  spicy  breezes 
which  blow  in  Board  Rooms  and  Council  Halls  ; 
we  let  slide  the  chance  of  leaving  a  thumb-mark 
on  the  clay  of  the  emerging  race.  Yet  we  had 
our  private  gains  ;  we  picked  up  and  pocketed 

166 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

sundry  gifts  which  the  victorious  faction  trod  under- 
foot ;  we  kept  better  company,  I  venture  to  think  ; 
if  we  wasted  our  summer  mornings  on  Lucretius 
and  his  theories  of  the  atmosphere,  at  least  we  did 
it  for  fun  ;  and  if  under  the  crowning  dispensation 
which  I  foresee  the  Warden  and  I  should  be  led 
out  to  suffer  together,  I  think  we  should  have  our 
revenge  upon  the  executive  body — as  we  have  had 
upon  other  incarnations  of  the  kind — in  an  im- 
pulsive grin  at  the  humour  of  it  all,  when  we  were 
once  outside  the  door. 

And  yet — and  yet — one  sometimes  dreams  one 
might  get  one's  own  way,  and  hew  the  Philistines, 
gently  enough,  without  any  world-shaking  con- 
vulsion, after  all.  There  is  no  divine  hedge  about 
the  plan  of  government  by  a  house  divided  against 
itself;  nothing  but  an  odd  and  as  yet  barely 
historical  infatuation  ;  there  is  no  saying  what 
solidity  of  national  happiness  we  might  not  attain 
if  public  men  were  by  some  humour  of  fortune  to 
compound  their  too  lofty  principles,  and  aim  at 
relative,  commonplace,  feasible  good  in  their 
experiments  on  the  body  of  the  state,  instead  of 
agonising  for  positive  perfection,  the  transcendental 
glories  of  their  platforms  and  their  cries.  Taste 
only  exists  to  change  ;  and  one  thinks  that  the 
run  of  luck  must  presently  alter,  and  the  possible 
combinations  of  change  for  the  worse  may  be 
exhausted  even  in  our  own  time.  I  may  yet 
live  to  hear  the  Warden  taking  Alpheus  and 
167 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

his  mates  in  Lucretius,  and  Dempster  reading 
to  his  classes  in  Montaigne,  and  even  find  myself 
a  personage  in  the  new-based  republic,  having 
my  say  in  the  nicer,  airier,  gayer  world,  without 
even  stirring  from  my  post  beneath  the  beech- 
tree  shade. 


168 


XVI 

July  17. 

THERE  are  summer  days — yesterday  was  one  of 
them — when  the  world  seems  to  kindle  at  the  sun, 
when  clouds,  grass,  waving  tree-tops,  green  fields 
of  wheat  burn  in  the  overflowing  fire.  A  steady 
wind  fans  the  flame ;  one  feels  the  truth  of  the 
Lucretian  touch  of  the  sun  "  feeding  on  the  blue." 
The  roses  haste  to  blow  wide  and  fall,  the  straw- 
berries colour  hourly,  and  send  their  spice  across 
the  garden ;  the  year  is  at  the  height,  there 
will  be  no  richer  day  this  twelvemonth.  The 
streaming  plume  of  cloud  that  rises  with  imper- 
ceptible motion  from  the  south  to  the  zenith  is  as 
bright  as  vapours  of  earth  can  be :  the  leaves  are 
white  fire  where  the  light  glances  on  them  above, 
and  emerald  where  it  strikes  through  ;  the  swallow 
that  sweeps  across  the  lawn  gleams  blue  on  head 
and  shoulder  ;  everything  glows,  wastes,  and  con- 
sumes ;  and  the  expense  of  life  is  set  before  our 
meditations  as  at  no  other  time.  I  have  tried  to 
make  this  impression  of  use  and  spending  answer- 
able for  the  regretful  pang  which  sometimes  comes 
in  times  of  happiest  weather  ;  but  that  paradox  is 
169 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

one  which  goes  beyond  our  best  guesses.  The 
attempt  to  analyse  even  so  far  as  to  suggest  a 
hypothesis  was  unwise ;  it  is  a  sufficiently  vulgar 
error  to  make  our  half-decipherable  alphabet  of 
sensual  forms  the  key  of  any  enigma  we  may 
conjecture  to  be  hidden  under  its  signs. 

Yesterday  was  Sunday,  and  some  such  medi- 
tations as  these  filled  up  a  half-hour  under  the 
beech  before  it  was  time  to  set  off  down  the  hill 
to  morning  church,  and  another  twenty  minutes 
in  the  churchyard,  while  I  read  the  old  headstones 
and  wondered  once  more  what  manner  of  men 
were  my  acquaintances  Timothee  Lintot  and 
Cleophas  Comber  a  hundred  and  seventy  years 
ago,  listened  to  the  changes  of  the  bells,  and 
watched  the  swifts  whirl  across  the  dark  of  the 
yews  or  balance  high  up  in  the  blue.  Whenever 
the  sense  of  the  magnificence  of  human  achieve- 
ment is  strong  upon  me,  I  like  to  go  and  look  at 
the  motions  of  those  soot-brown  wings  in  their 
miracle  of  controlled  force.  Every  mode  of  their 
movement,  the  quick  oaring  flight,  rolling  a  little 
from  side  to  side,  as  a  fine  sculler  may  roll  a  little 
in  the  exuberance  of  his  mastery ;  the  climbing 
flutter,  light  as  down  on  an  eddy  of  air ;  the  head- 
long stoop  ;  the  rush  of  the  race  from  whose  vehe- 
ment swish  one  jerks  back  one's  head  instinctively, 
a  twentieth  of  a  second  too  late,  in  man's  ponderous 
way,  if  the  chances  of  collision  had  rested  on  the 
human  judgment.  I  take  an  extreme  pleasure  in 
170 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

watching  any  bodily  feat  thoroughly  well  done  ; 
the  knack  of  even  a  second-rate  batsman,  the 
poise  and  shoulder-swing  of  a  finished  skater,  the 
pause  and  lift  of  the  mower,  are  all  good  things 
to  see  ;  and  yet  the  hulking  clumsiness  of  the  best 
of  human  attitude  compared  with  the  motions  of 
the  beasts  !  The  prettiest  high-jumper  that  ever 
grazed  the  bar  never  came  near  the  grace  with 
which  Nym  clears  a  bramble  spray  in  his  hedge- 
bottom  scrambles,  tossing  himself  up  and  out  from 
a  standing  take-off — every  movement,  from  the 
flip  of  the  ears  to  the  crook  of  the  tail,  one  piece 
of  perfect  rhythm.  And,  to  come  back  to  the 
swifts,  I  think  no  candid  person  could  look  at  their 
career  for  five  minutes  without  a  touch  of  shame 
for  all  our  monstrous  contrivances  of  speed,  our 
roaring,  fuming,  stinking  machines,  always  ugly 
and  noisome  in  ratio  to  their  power,  by  the  side  of 
that  silent  economy  of  navigation,  the  enormous 
proportionate  power  of  the  frail  wings,  the  control 
of  steerage  and  arrest,  the  management  of  balance 
and  planes  whose  first  principles  our  toy-science 
still  boggles  at. 

When  the  one-bell  was  near  its  last  stroke,  I  left 
the  swifts  to  their  skiey  exercises,  and  turned  into 
the  porch  with  the  last  stragglers  of  the  congrega- 
tion. Our  church  and  its  services  afford,  I  think, 
less  excuse  than  a  good  many  others  for  the  losing 
of  the  devotional  in  the  critical  faculty.  There 
are  remnants  of  ancient  beauty  in  the  building 

171 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

which  have  survived  the  fury  of  two  generations 
of  restorers ;  but  I  sometimes  imagine  that  we 
might  put  in  a  plea  in  defence  of  modern  short- 
comings in  public  devotion,  if  we  were  to  allege 
all  that  we  have  lost  in  the  way  of  encouragement, 
compared  with  the  possessions  of  our  forefathers, 
whose  tabernacles  were  quick  with  fresh  beauty,  a 
piece  of  life  coming  out  of  their  own  hearts  and 
heads.  With  the  Warden  in  desk  or  pulpit  we 
are  at  least  exercised  in  godliness,  if  not  always 
lifted  up  ;  the  rude  mouldings  of  capital  and  pillar, 
no  rubbed-down  template  inanity  of  our  own 
mode,  tell  us  at  least  of  grace,  and,  we  like  to 
think,  of  faith.  We  are  not  troubled  here  with 
passing  fashions  of  church  furniture  which  I  have 
heard  spoken  of  as  "stately  symbolism,"  and  which 
appear  to  one  of  the  profane  as  strangely  tawdry 
selections  from  the  catalogues  of  an  entirely  com- 
mercial ecclesiastical  decorator.  But  we  cannot 
escape  from  our  east  window,  a  tenth-rate  specimen 
of  the  vogue  of  forty  years  ago,  depraving  our 
eyes  week  by  week  with  its  intolerable  false 
scarlets  and  blues  ;  nor  yet  from  others  of  more 
recent  date,  which  wait  the  damnation  of  the  next 
generation,  windows  in  a  sort  of  Flemish  Renais- 
sance manner,  with  patches  of  unclean  clarets  and 
bottle-greens  on  large  spaces  of  white  ground ; 
trade  antiques,  both  of  the  genres,  with  a  definitely 
irreligious  influence  in  the  direction  either  of 
debauched  sentiment  or  naughty  temper.  It  is 

172 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

poor  comfort  to  turn  from  these  irritants,  crude  or 
cultured,  to  the  faint  stains  on  the  wall  above 
them,  relics  of  pleated  robe,  of  peacock-eyed  wings, 
of  an  aureole  and  a  face  mild  and  placid  as  we 
could  not  conceive  a  face  now ;  shadows  of  paint- 
ing of  the  fourteenth  century  which  have  survived 
churchwardens'  whitewash  and  the  restorers  from 
the  Cromwellians  to  our  own  time.  In  like  manner 
one  sometimes  escapes,  in  churches  where  they  are 
very  musical,  from  Dr.  Sesquialtera's  last  new 
minor  double-chant  to  sudden  mercies  of  Battishill 
or  Purcell,  heart's  melody  after  tormented  noise, 
which  takes  hold  of  the  drowsy  urchins  in  the 
choir  and  the  flighty  young  women  in  the  aisle, 
and  pulls  them  together  all  at  once  out  of  their 
semitone  flatness,  and  perhaps  into  finer  intonation 
of  the  understanding  also.  And  through  all  such 
frettings  and  reliefs  clearer  and  clearer  comes  the 
assurance  that  we  have  to  do  not  with  a  matter  of 
good  and  bad,  but  of  right  and  wrong,  divided  by 
a  hair's-breadth  line  whose  position  it  much  con- 
cerns us  to  ascertain.  Into  some  such  digression 
as  this  I  have  now  and  again  been  led,  in  yawning 
hours,  let  us  say,  of  the  Vicar's  less  fruitful  ex- 
positions ;  but  yesterday,  when  in  the  pauses  of 
the  Kyrie  I  heard  the  swifts  shrilling  round  the 
spire  high  up  in  the  burning  blue,  my  thoughts 
wandered  to  the — 

"  Happy  birds  that  sing  and  fly 
Round  Thine  altars  ..." 

173 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

of  our  morning  hymn;  and  a  man  with  a  tem- 
perament as  analytic  as  aquafortis  may  perhaps 
be  forgiven  for  wondering  why  the  saints  are 
happier  who  sing  out  of  tune  in  a  close  heat  and 
aroma  of  Sunday-best,  under  the  gules  and  azure 
of  that  murderous  window.  Perhaps  it  was  in  a 
momentary  nod  of  oblivion  that  the  rude  arches, 
the  dull  warmth,  the  cry  of  the  swifts  turned  to 
shadowy  vaulting  crossed  by  dim-streaming  rays 
from  a  high  rose-window,  filled  with  the  soaring 
note  of  an  angelic  treble.  My  wandering  was  re- 
buked by  hearing  old  Tully's  voice  in  the  hymn, 
giving  the  florid  tenor  with  unmistakable  fervour 
of  intent,  and  next  by  the  sight  of  Molly  Crofts 
in  the  Warden's  pew,  seen  a  moment  between  a 
pillar  and  the  gay  parterre  of  hats  in  that  quarter, 
her  face  as  she  sang  instinct  with  something  that 
my  reckoning  had  left  out  of  account,  a  quality 
missed  by  the  analytic  temper  and  the  discursive 
mind,  perhaps  a  motion  of  the  wisdom  of  which  it 
is  said  that  she  passeth  and  goeth  through  all 
things  by  reason  of  her  pureness. 

After  service  I  went  on  to  the  Almshouse,  and 
while  I  waited  for  the  Warden  in  the  lodge-entry, 
I  observed  the  congregation  streaming  dinner-wards 
down  the  street.  Overhead  the  swifts  still  glanced 
and  wheeled  with  their  perfection  of  effortless 
grace,  and  never  an  eye  was  raised  to  look  at 
them  in  all  the  company  that  crept  along  the 
earth  with  clumsy  labour,  with  feet  that  trotted 

174 


LONEVVOOD   CORNER 

or  lurched  or  waddled  or  minced,  but  did  not 
show — not  one  pair  in  a  hundred — that  they  had 
ever  approached  the  first  rudiments  of  the  art  of 
walking.  And  from  the  feet  to  the  faces  was  no 
better  change.  A  bringing-up  in  Phidian  ideals  is 
a  two-sided  gift  to  a  man ;  the  failure  of  ordinary 
human  features  from  the  worshipped  example  may 
lie  on  the  temper  like  a  fretted  wrong,  and  may 
add  a  last  sting  to  the  sense  of  one's  obligations 
to  "  Progress."  I  think,  from  observations  in  other 
parts  of  our  islands,  that  the  people  of  this  county 
are  a  singularly  plain  race  ;  but  at  best  the  nation 
is  far  below  the  reasonable  and  practicable  standard 
of  looks.  Here  as  the  churchgoers  filed  past  the 
archway  of  the  lodge  in  the  clear  sunlight,  I  must 
needs  turn  my  spleen  upon  the  safe  and  solid  re- 
sistance of  general  principles,  as  I  saw  the  almost 
universal  deformity,  the  blunted  and  flattened  and 
twisted  features,  the  signs  of  undeveloped  nature, 
the  trace  of  diseases  new  and  old,  the  fret  and 
burden  of  all  shapes  of  unhappy  soul.  Downright 
forceful  ugliness,  a  thing  of  character  and  humour, 
would  be  a  relief  from  this  reign  of  slackness,  in- 
sipidity, vacuous  asymmetry.  Such  a  little  amend- 
ment would  often  put  all  right !  I  find  myself  at 
times  indulging  a  plastic  instinct,  saying  that  by 
flattening  such  a  nose  a  little,  bringing  forward 
such  a  brow,  patting  out  this  hollow,  pinching  up 
that  mouth  I  could  botch  the  clay  of  many  a 
hapless  physiognomy  into  a  practicable  grace.  It 
175 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

is  partly  due  to  the  Greeks  and  partly  perhaps  to 
an  original  list  of  humour  that  all  my  travels  are 
a  quest  of  good  faces ;  roads  and  inns,  market- 
squares  of  country  towns,  cottage  gardens,  the 
fleeting  shoals  of  railway  platforms  or  London 
streets,  in  all  I  seek  the  beauty  of  the  old  descent. 
The  faces  which  I  mark — one  or  two  in  a  day's 
journey,  perhaps — have  a  certain  common  character 
not  easy  to  define ;  youth  and  a  large  degree  of 
physical  health  are  part  of  the  spell,  and  I  think 
ingenuousness  and  wholesome  mind,  and  perhaps 
also  a  sort  of  pathetic  expression,  which  for  want 
of  any  rational  cause  I  am  pleased  to  attribute  to 
the  unconscious  bearing  about  of  a  lost  cause,  the 
burden  of  a  proscribed  race.  For  of  all  generations 
of  men  we  have  set  ourselves  positively  to  deny 
the  power  of  beauty  ;  every  device  of  our  social 
economy  necessitously  destroys  it ;  our  very  arts 
— not  the  toy-making  of  galleries  and  schools,  but 
the  workaday  technic  which  gives  us  our  lamp- 
posts and  railway  stations  and  shop-fronts — are  an 
imbecile's  outrage  on  the  Muses.  For  the  perfect- 
ness  of  pleasure  in  natural  scents  and  sounds,  we 
have  the  reign  of  stench  and  din  ;  most  of  us  will 
breathe  the  sulphur  and  soot  of  a  railway  terminus 
without  disgust,  as  they  will  breathe  the  summer 
wind  through  a  fir-wood  without  conscious  pleasure, 
and  will  find  their  thoughts  as  much  disturbed  by 
the  clanking  and  roaring  as  by  the  murmur  of 
the  boughs  and  the  sound  of  bees  in  the  heather. 

176 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 


We  have  our  minds  so  constantly  at  the  telescopic 
or  microscopic  focus  that  we  lose  the  power  of 
fixing  them  on  the  outward  show  of  things  at 
common  range.  The  schooling  which  our  excellent 
Dempster  and  his  mates  give  to  the  rising  race  is 
perhaps  the  most  sustained  and  elaborate  attempt 
ever  made  to  annul  the  senses,  to  put  printed  paper 
between  us  and  the  light,  to  prevent  us  taking  into 
our  own  plain  faces  the  least  reflex  of  the  beauty 
about  us.  Suppose  that  the  arts  are  really  as  dead 
as  they  seem  to  be,  and  that  we  are  right,  not  so 
much  in  preferring  our  stained-glass  windows  to  the 
whitewashed  fresco,  or  the  crawling-alive  hymns 
to  Merbecke  or  Purcell,  as  in  lumping  all  together 
in  superior  indifference :  suppose  that  thus  far  we 
are  justifiable,  being  as  a  nation  too  poor  to  allow 
ourselves  any  elegancies  that  cannot  be  hawked  in 
the  streets  of  the  world  ;  yet  there  are  elementary 
dangers  in  an  incapacity  to  note  the  differences  of 
natural  things,  earth  and  sky  and  human  faces 
about  us.  We  never  look  at  the  clouds,  save  in 
some  blundering  attempt  at  forecast  when  we  feel 
the  rain  on  our  faces ;  summer  and  winter  hardly 
touch  us  but  by  discomforts  of  temperature;  we 
rejoice  in  our  thundering  right  line  of  motion  with 
its  appalling  waste  of  energy,  blind  to  the  lesson 
of  the  birds'  wings.  If  we  but  knew,  we  might 
condone  our  own  ugliness,  perhaps  in  time 
amend  it,  by  observing  the  human  beauty  which 
now  and  then  escapes  the  common  curse.  We 
177  N 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

have  definitely  turned  away  from  one  of  the  first 
lessons  of  the  human  curriculum,  perhaps  the 
simplest  and  deepest  of  all ;  and  we  are  already 
punished,  blind  and  deaf  in  the  appointed  kind 
and  degree. 

I  had  left  the  lodge,  as  the  Warden  was  long 
in  coming,  and  turned  into  the  garden  ;  and  I  was 
running  on  thus  to  myself  in  a  familiar  strain, 
when  I  saw  Molly  Crofts  coming  down  the  long 
walk  that  leads  from  the  Green  Parlour  between  the 
larkspurs  and  the  phloxes.  She  had  taken  off  the 
buckler-broad  hat  which  had  kept  in  countenance 
its  fellows  of  the  mode,  and  with  them  had  made 
the  south  aisle  look  like  a  flower-plot,  and  the  sun 
shone  very  agreeably  on  the  smooth  brow  and  the 
crinkles  of  brown  hair.  She  came  on  me  at  a 
corner,  from  behind  a  tall  clump  of  sweet  peas, 
and  I  had  one  of  her  gayest  smiles,  shining 
delightfully  in  the  eyes  before  the  mouth  could 
begin  to  curve.  Her  look  had  something  of 
summer  Sunday  morning  in  it,  and  I  think  kept 
still  a  little  of  the  lifting  up  I  had  seen  while  we 
sang  our  hymn  in  such  various  strains.  We  made 
two  or  three  turns  up  and  down  the  walk  together, 
and  by  the  time  the  Warden  joined  us,  surplice  on 
arm,  I  had  been  able  to  remind  myself  of  some 
half-forgotten  qualities  in  those  antique  standards 
of  mine,  and  to  see  how  invincibly  the  great 
argument  shows  by  the  light  of  certain  eyes. 


178 


XVII 

August  8. 

THE  most  inveterate  anchorite  in  country  soli- 
tudes ought  to  go  up  to  London  now  and  then ; 
say,  once  a  year.  Until  a  just  policy  of  decentra- 
lisation shall  have  brought  to  his  doors  a  share  of 
the  good  things  at  present  stacked  together  in  one 
noisy  and  malodorous  region,  there  are  pictures 
and  music  and — worst  of  all — people,  not  to  be 
seen  or  heard  without  an  occasional  pilgrimage. 
But  even  without  these  reasons,  a  journey  to  town 
is  worth  its  cost  for  the  mere  pleasure  of  getting 
back  again.  To  know  the  full  charm  of  the 
country  one  must  escape  out  of  the  baked  streets 
of  August*or  November's  dun  shroud,  straight  into 
the  breath  of  green  fields  or  the  mild  sunlight 
sleeping  on  the  faded  woods.  The  dull  roar  of 
the  traffic,  the  ceaseless  tide  of  strange  faces,  the 
pallid  smoky  light,  the  complex  smells,  the  sense 
of  being  swamped  and  lost  in  the  press  of  life 
conspire  to  produce  an  obsession  lasting  through 
the  sway  and  rumble  of  the  sleepy  afternoon  train 
by  which  one's  flight  is  made.  Only  when  one 
descends  at  the  little  wayside  station,  where  the 
179 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

nasturtiums  in  the  flint-edged  beds  greet  one 
with  a  not  unrecognised  rusticity  and  the  station- 
master's  salute  implies  congratulations  on  the 
accomplishment  of  the  adventure  set  out  upon 
under  his  auspices  two  whole  days  ago,  does  one 
begin  to  resume  one's  individuality  and  the  grate- 
ful ease  of  self-respect.  The  sight  of  familiar  faces 
and  the  exchange  of  greetings  in  the  accustomed 
formula  over  cottage  gates  and  at  due  corners  of 
the  road  go  some  way  to  break  the  dreary  spell  ; 
but  it  is  only  when  one  turns,  as  the  light  begins 
to  fail  a  little,  out  of  the  highway  into  the  field- 
path,  that  the  mind  gets  wholly  clear  of  it.  The 
scent  of  grass  in  the  first  cool  of  the  dew  and  the 
sweet  silence  of  the  valley  come  in  upon  the  heart 
with  sudden  tenfold  charm — with  the  charm  of 
privacy  and  quiet  after  the  insolent  interferences 
of  town,  of  delicacy  and  fineness  to  a  degree  even 
till  now  unsuspected,  the  dearer  for  the  recollec- 
tion of  coarse  confusion  which  it  breathes  away. 
One's  personality  expands  and  reposed  itself,  no 
more  whirled  like  a  half-drowned  fly  in  some 
gutter-eddy,  but  as  one  perched  aloft  among  green 
leaves  that  preens  its  feelers  and  opens  its  wings 
to  the  pleasant  air.  A  last  countercharm  remains 
to  complete  the  deliverance.  Once  the  garden 
gate  closes  behind  the  traveller  and  the  orbis 
terrarum  possesses  its  proper  centre  again,  every- 
thing seems  to  have  a  new  perfection,  a  claim  and 
lien  not  credibly  ever  to  be  run  away  from  any 

1 80 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

more.  The  red  pillars  of  the  firs  and  their  vaulted 
darkness  never  looked  so  solemn,  the  spaces  of 
sky  between  them  never  so  ethereally  clear;  the 
hush  of  evening  was  never  so  divine  as  it  is  to  the 
wanderer  who  has  won  his  way  back  to  the  upper 
airs  from  that  grim  underworld  of  town. 

From  my  last  expedition  to  London  I  travelled 
down  with  Mrs.  Sims-Bigg,  who  is  an  old  adversary 
of  mine  in  the  matter  of  town  versus  country ;  and 
our  talk  during  the  journey  served  to  clear  and 
define  sundry  musings  which  had  infested  my  head 
during  the  day,  and  to  start  some  new  ones  which 
for  a  while  after  continued  to  circle  about  the 
ground  of  the  old  controversy.  If  I  failed  to 
convert  my  enemy,  as  I  seem  to  have  failed  on 
other  occasions,  I  had  at  least  the  satisfaction 
of  feeling  the  curious  justness  of  my  positions 
all  the  more  soundly  settled  for  the  concussion 
of  the  fray. 

The  traditional  cause  between  the  country  and 
the  town — the  "  rure  ego  viventem,  tu  dicis  in  urbe 
beatum  " — seems  at  length  in  the  way  of  settle- 
ment, judgment  going  against  the  country  almost 
by  default.  The  contest,  long  waged  with  strangely 
equal  fortune,  has  come  to  an  end  almost  abruptly  ; 
within  living  memory  the  town,  the  urban  taste 
and  habit,  has  overrun  and  occupied  the  rural 
territory  :  quicker  even  than  the  waste  of  brick 
and  mortar  spreads  across  suburban  fields,  the 
influence  of  the  streets  has  flowed  over  the  rustic 
181 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

mind  and  temper.  Up  to  the  time  of  our  own 
recollection,  the  two  principles  kept  a  sort  of 
balance,  the  rural  simplicity  and  ruder  strength, 
constantly  drawn  into  the  centre,  maintained  in 
mixture  the  best  qualities  of  its  proper  force,  and 
had  in  the  making  of  the  best  English  character  a 
share  insufficiently  accounted  of  by  most  historians. 
Now  the  tide  ebbs  :  London  has  brimmed  over  and 
run  back  over  the  old  channels ;  the  farthest 
sources  of  the  earlier  supply  are  swamped — 
"  imis  Stagna  refusa  vadis  " — by  the  universal 
Cockney  soul.  A  literary  instance  will  here  serve 
better  than  anything  else — as  it  usually  will — to 
illustrate  the  change :  set  such  essential  townsmen 
as  Pope,  Addison,  even  Johnson  beside  our  latest 
Arcadian  versifier  or  romancist  of  the  soil,  and 
hear  in  the  first  the  sonorous  timbre  of  native 
speech,  the  racy  birth-note  and  vernacular  thought 
underlying  and  giving  life  to  all  the  courtliness  or 
wit ;  in  the  second,  observe  the  thin  dentals  of 
Cokayne  all  too  clear  beneath  the  disguise  of 
studied  dialect  and  sentiment.  We  are  all  Lon- 
doners now  in  our  cradles,  from  Bow  Bells  to 
Berwick ;  and  be  sure  the  sister  kingdoms  have 
their  proper  equivalents.  The  trouble  which  we 
call  the  Rural  Exodus  is,  of  course,  an  actual 
measure  of  the  town's  ascendency  ;  the  decay  of 
farming,  already  reduced  in  the  nation's  eyes  to 
a  make-believe  industry,  a  mere  appendage  of 
sporting  interests ;  the  characteristics  of  rural 

182 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

government  and  education,  a  ramification  of  nerve- 
less tentacles,  possessing  the  chilly  stringency  of 
an  octopus,  with  an  inaccessible  heart  somewhere 
in  Westminster  or  Whitehall ;  all  these  things 
witness  the  destroyed  balance,  the  new  conditions 
of  national  life,  the  great  experiment  which  is 
being  made  without  data,  whose  possibilities  are 
with  one  consent  ignored. 

To  take  one  of  these  classes  of  evidence — 
obvious  enough,  perhaps,  to  incur  the  oblivion 
now  dealt  to  all  primary  and  fundamental  con- 
cerns— London — and  here,  of  course,  London 
stands  for  all  towns  of  mass  sufficient  to  exert  that 
fatal  attraction — can  no  more  produce  its  own 
muscle  or  intellect  than  it  can  its  mutton  or  its 
roses ;  it  must  have  its  Smithfield  for  thews  and 
its  Covent  Garden  for  brains,  into  which  year  by 
year  pours  the  raw  material  for  its  manufacture. 
Failing  the  punctual  supply  from  without,  the 
country  bone  and  blood  to  make  policemen  and 
porters,  navvies  and  nursemaids,  London  would  in 
a  couple  of  months  be  stifled  in  its  own  decay. 
And  the  case  is  the  same  with  mental  repair  ;  cut 
off  the  supply  of  solid — call  it  stolid,  if  you  prefer 
the  word — temperament,  easy-breathed  and  of 
steady  nerves;  leave  London  for  a  twelvemonth 
to  incubate  its  peculiar  crasis  ;  and  it  would  be 
one  Bedlam.  As  surely  as  its  bread  and  its  drink- 
ing-water must  come  from  green  fields  and  clean 
skies,  the  bodies  and  souls  which  it  consumes 

183 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

must  be  produced  in  regions  beyond  the  reach  of 
its  contagion.  And  precisely  as  the  tide  of  bricks 
and  mortar  ousts  the  last  pretences  of  corn-growing 
in  some  half-rural  suburb,  so  the  spreading  of  the 
city-spirit  over  the  country  strikes  at  the  supply  of 
refective  humanity.  Corn  and  cattle  we  can  fetch, 
for  the  present,  from  green  fields  elsewhere — even 
beyond  the  Atlantic;  do  we  contemplate  a  pro- 
vision of  the  other  commodity  from  the  same 
quarter  ?  As  the  matter  stands,  it  appears — to  an 
observer  here  in  the  wilderness,  at  least — that  our 
imports  of  this  sort,  as  seen  about  the  Port  of 
London,  are  not  of  a  type  likely  to  repair  our 
losses  satisfactorily ;  but  it  would  make  no  differ- 
ence if  the  finest  samples  of  mankind  procurable 
arrived  regularly  in  Thames  or  Mersey.  If  our 
isles  cannot  raise  a  population  of  a  certain  weight 
and  girth,  a  certain  soundness  and  force  of  spirit, 
the  game  is  already  up,  and  our  destinies  have 
passed  out  of  our  own  keeping.  We  in  the 
wilderness  discover  from  our  newspapers  and  re- 
views that  the  people  who  live  behind  numbered 
doors,  whose  view  of  the  country's  corn  supply 
does  not,  as  a  rule,  go  beyond  the  punctual  baker's 
cart,  begin  at  length  to  see  the  risks,  in  certain 
contingencies,  of  our  not  being  self-supporting  in 
the  matter  of  national  provender.  Coleridge's 
warning  in  1834,  that  in  depending  upon  foreign 
corn  we  forget  we  are  "  subjugating  the  necessaries 
of  life  itself  to  the  mere  comforts  and  luxuries  of 

184 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

society,"  is  still  in  substance  repeated ;  but  not 
often  his  condemnation  as  false  and  pernicious  the 
"  supposition  that  agriculture  is  not  a  positive  good 
to  the  nation,  taken  in  and  by  itself  as  a  mode  of 
existence  for  the  people."  If  the  Fates  are  patient 
with  us,  we  may  yet  learn  in  time  that  it  is 
ultimately  not  the  corn  raised  by  the  man  which 
matters,  but  the  man  fashioned  by  raising  the 
corn.  The  simple  fact  that  without  the  bodily 
exercise  of  the  soil  and  the  sea  a  wholesome  race 
cannot  be  reared  is,  as  far  as  any  signs  of  practice 
go,  completely  ignored. 

Something  in  this  sense,  with  the  energy  due  to 
a  favourite  topic,  and  with  a  good  deal  of  hauling 
the  argument  back  into  the  right  line  from  several 
sorts  of  tangential  wandering,  I  had  propounded 
to  Mrs.  Sims-Bigg,  whose  mental  personality,  if 
not  by  itself  very  distinguished,  as  a  type  may  be 
said  to  touch  the  profound. 

" '  Ignored,'  indeed ! "  she  exclaims,  with  a 
suggestion  of  temper  due,  perhaps,  to  her  not 
having  had  quite  a  fair  share  of  the  argument. 
11 '  Ignored ! '  when  we  are  all  trying  to  find  how 
to  keep  the  people  on  the  land  and  prevent  them 
crowding  into  the  towns  in  that  dreadful  way !  I 
suppose  you  didn't  read  Lady  Estridge-Sandys* 
article  in  last  week's  Leaven?  You  ought  to 
have  been  at  a  meeting  I  went  to  last  week  in 
Bossingham  Gardens  ;  the  speaking  was  admirable; 
the  Bishop  most  stimulating,  and  Miss  Blathervvayt 

185 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

— she  works  in  Poplar,  you  know — so  suggestive 
and  helpful.  '  Ignored  ! ' " 

I  said  that  it  was  one  of  the  curiosities  of  the 
case  that  they  were  never  tired  of  talking  about 
the  country  ;  but  that  the  country  was  waiting  to 
see  something  done. 

And  who  were  "  they,"  might  she  inquire  ? 

"  The  Town,  Madam,  that  has  been  pleased  to 
'  take  up '  the  Country,  and  being  almost  entirely 
ignorant  of  its  wants  and  meanings,  governs  it, 
thinks  for  it,  paints  it,  writes  about  it " 

Mrs.  Sims-Bigg  smiles  rather  provocatively. 

"Ignorant  of  the  country,  are  we?  The  best- 
trained  and  most  advanced  intellects  are  not  able 
to  grasp  the  ways  of  Little  Pedlington,  I  suppose  ? " 

I  answered  that  I  thought  they  might,  if  they 
ever  came  to  try.  At  present  London  constructed 
out  of  its  inner  consciousness  one  of  the  most 
curious  dummies  ever  made  to  stand  for  live  fact. 
The  townsman's  fundamental  mistake  in  dealing 
with  country  affairs  is  his  assumption  of  in- 
herent superiority.  He  has  only  to  use  his  eyes : 
training  ?  sympathy  ?  acquirement  of  dialects  of 
thought  ?  He  smiles  the  suggestions  aside  ;  what 
are  the  alertness  and  acuteness  of  the  street-bred 
intellect  worth,  if  they  cannot  dissect  at  a  glance, 
dull,  slow-moving  Hodge?  And  yet,  if  poor 
Hodge,  wriggling  quite  disrespectfully  under  the 
forceps,  should  venture  to  question  the  value  of 
the  results,  it  might  be  found  that  the  investigator 
1 86 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

had  left  something  out  of  the  account — protective 
devices  such  as  Nature  teaches  the  wild  things  ;  a 
strange  refraction  of  the  lines  of  thought,  produced 
instantaneously  between  the  two  types  of  mind  by 
their  different  densities ;  the  exoteric  forms  of 
speech  and  expression,  reserved  for  the  aliens  ;  the 
seven-times-fenced-with-brass  reserve. 

"'Reserve?'"  says  the  opponent,  with  an  in- 
tonation of  reflective  questioning.  "  Yes  ;  only 
some  people  would  call  it  hopeless  stupidity,  I 
think." 

I  told  her  that  was,  of  course,  the  ground-fallacy 
of  the  whole  position.  If  she  would,  just  as  an 
experiment,  try  to  see  that  there  is  more  than  one 
scale  of  time,  and  that  the  straight  line  is  not 
always  the  shortest :  and  would  be  ready  to  wait 
five  or  six  years  for  the  rustic  nature  to  open 
itself  out,  and  would  not  mind  being  laughed  at 
meanwhile  from  behind  the  mask  of  what  she 
called  stolidity — with  a  few  more  such  branches 
of  learning — I  should  have  hopes  of  her  yet. 

"  Thank  you  very  much  !  And  your  yokels,  of 
course,  see  through  us  poor  Cockneys  as  easily  as 
possible  all  the  time  ?  " 

I  said  I  was  quite  sure  of  that.  London  views 
and  London  ways  have  a  quite  fatal  easiness  for 
Hodge.  Our  folk  go  up  from  the  village  very 
tolerable  Arcadians  spite  of  all  the  education  they 
get,  and  come  back  in  six  months  on  a  flying  visit 
full  graduate  and  most  complete  Cockneys.  But 
187 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

is  it  imaginable,  except  in  rare  conjunctions,  that 
a  born  and  bred  Londoner  could  in  any  length  of 
time  learn  the  ways  of  the  village  and  the  life  of 
the  fields  ?  The  capacity  which  can  "  assimilate  " 
the  significance  of  the  Borough  or  Hackney  in  a 
few  weeks  does  not  make  much  trouble  of  the 
solitary  citizens  that  it  may  find  straying  in  its 
fields. 

And  how  long,  Mrs.  Sims-Bigg  would  like  to 
know,  have  I  been  in  getting  to  know  the  ways 
of  this  mysterious  race?  Well,  I  have  lived 
among  them  getting  on  for  thirty  years,  summer 
and  winter,  without  many  days'  holiday;  and  I 
only  know  one  or  two  here  and  there  yet ;  for 
the  most  part  one  can  see  something  under  the 
surface,  and  guess  at  all  sorts  of  puzzles,  and  learn 
not  to  be  very  positive  about  anything,  except 
perhaps  the  sure  and  certain  truth  that  there  is 
not  much  to  be  learned  about  the  rustic  in  a  full 
house-party  at  Frogswell  Place,  or  even  in  a  series 
of  summer  week-ends  in  the  country.  From  this 
point  I  took  the  war  into  the  enemy's  country, 
and  went  on  to  enlarge  upon  instances  of  the 
Town's  amazing  ignorance  of  us  and  our  little 
likes  and  dislikes  —  the  beneficent  regulations 
which  apparently  do  not  allow  for  any  difference 
between  the  conditions  of  existence  in  Lambeth 
and  on  Lonewood  Common  ;  the  ghastly-laugh- 
able educational  mixture  which  is  served  out  alike 
to  the  small  people  in  Rats'  Rents,  E,,  and  to  our 

1 88 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 


little  Joskins  at  Trucker's  Hatch.  I  tried  to  point 
out  the  difference,  as  affecting  character  and  the 
humanities,  between  living  amid  the  flux  of  un- 
distinguishable  millions  and  sojourning  in  a  region 
where  every  face  is  perfectly  familiar,  and  where 
every  man's  history  is  circumstantially  known 
by  each  of  his  thirty  or  forty  neighbours  in  the 
adjacent  square  mile  of  neglected  fields.  Was  it 
not  possible  that  the  very  simplicity  of  the  life  in 
the  open  air,  the  dealing  with  Nature  and  the 
elements  very  much  at  first  hand,  had  its  own 
gifts — intuitions  and  faculties  in  which  we  admit 
the  ignoble  savage  to  be  our  superior?  Possible 
also  that  the  streets,  their  restrictions  of  daylight 
and  horizon,  their  ready-made  provision,  supplying 
all  needs  by  the  process  of  "going  round  the 
corner,"  took  out  of  a  man  the  qualities  of 
initiative  and  resource,  left  in  a  large  measure  the 
machine-part  behind  ? 

I  had  begun  to  make  some  impression  on  my 
enemy's  defences,  as  I  judged  by  the  perceptible 
decline  of  her  interest  in  the  discussion,  when  we 
came  to  the  little  wayside  station,  and  I  was  able 
to  tell  her  that  I  saw  the  cinnamon  liveries  and 
red  wheels  waiting  behind  the  creeper-clad  shanty 
which  calls  itself  a  booking-office.  When  the  bays 
had  gone  by  me  in  a  cloud  of  dust,  I  struck  into 
the  field-path  and  found  at  once  the  tenfold  charm 
of  brooding  quiet  and  such  an  impression  of  dear 
reality  as  daylight  brings  to  the  whirling  fantasies 
189 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

of  dreams.  I  mused  as  I  went  upon  the  Mrs. 
Sims-Biggs  of  the  world,  who  know  the  country 
just  as  tourists  on  the  highroad  know  the  scenery 
about  them — woods,  fields,  roofs,  village  spires  in 
a  general  picturesque,  a  mere  sliding  background 
to  their  travel — never  thinking  how  the  prospect- 
may  strike  the  dwellers  among  those  obscure  field- 
paths  and  lonely  woods,  the  folk  to  whom  every 
tree  is  a  landmark,  every  meadow  and  copse  has  a 
name  and  character,  every  house  a  history.  These 
saunterers  on  the  highway,  flitting  through  their 
week-end  visits,  their  country-house  summers ; 
enjoying  surface-pleasures  of  repose,  of  quaintness 
such  as  more  saliently  contrasts  with  the  things  of 
their  habitude  ;  half-hearing  a  strange  language  of 
thought,  guessing  at  meanings  by  help  of  their 
own  book-knowledge  and  traditions  :  these  very 
people  are,  by  Fortune's  spite,  the  historians  and 
physiologists  of  the  rural  world.  They  have  no 
misgivings  that  there  are  obscure  motions  in  the 
rural  system  requiring  half  a  lifetime  for  their 
parallax ;  they  make  no  allowance  for  refractions 
of  vision  and  inconstant  factors  in  calculation  ; 
they  generalise  and  confound  such  detail  as  the 
distinctions  of  class,  as  sharply  cleft  at  the  bottom 
of  the  scale  as  anywhere  in  the  region  of  their  own 
level ;  they  know  nothing  of  the  varying  moral 
atmospheres  of  village  and  village,  of  the  under- 
ground stirrings  of  political  and  social  ideas  acting 
on  a  purified  democracy  ever  since  the  time 
190 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

"Ex  quo  suffragia  nulli 
Vendimus  .  .  ." 

They  are  not  concerned  for  the  wiping  out  of 
the  archaic  and  the  picturesque — in  far  subtler 
ways  than  by  church-restorations  and  the  growth 
of  "residential  centres" — for  the  grey  flattening 
and  dulling  of  life  coming  on  as  quietly  and  com- 
prehensively as  a  November  twilight,  for  the 
rubbing  down  of  all  salience  of  character  and 
marked  degrees  of  good  or  evil  into  a  blurred 
mediocrity.  They  appear  to  think  that  country 
dispositions  have  stood  still  somewhere  about  the 
phase  which  Crabbe  drew,  in  this  connection  not 
giving  enough  credit  to  our  own  energies  for  the 
effects  they  have  succeeded  in  producing — that 
stupendous  uniformity  and  inclusiveness  of  our 
schooling,  the  abandonment  of  the  old  national 
livelihood  and  its  result  in  new  and  wholly  experi- 
mental conditions,  the  breeding  of  a  race  mongrel 
between  town  and  country,  a  state  of  intellectual 
suspense  and  anarchy,  the  old  inheritance  lost  and 
the  new  maintenance  still  to  seek. 

I  had  got  so  far  in  one  more  arraignment  of  the 
often  sentenced  offender  when  I  met  at  the  half- 
way heave-gate  my  old  neighbour  Jethro  Tully  on 
his  way  home  to  the  Vachery,  and  found  matter 
pertinent  to  the  pleas  in  his  salutation,  in  the 
complex  meaning  of  the  traditional  deference  and 
respect  of  lifelong  use,  crossed  by  a  hint  of 
Radical  independence,  in  the  veil  of  reserve  rather 
191 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

sly  than  shy,  lifted  ever  so  little  at  one  corner  as 
a  concession  to  sixteen  years'  acquaintance,  in 
a  fundamental  good  sense  and  native  breeding 
underlying  all.  We  stood  to  talk  a  minute  as  our 
custom  is,  and  in  his  half-dozen  scraps  of  gossip 
the  old  man  showed  signs  of  a  ripe  wisdom  in 
matters,  and  a  dry,  somewhat  censorious  humour. 
"Density?  quoth  Mrs.  Sims-Bigg?  Where  is 
density  like  that  of  the  brains  over-centralised  in 
some  half-dozen  square  miles  of  foggy  streets, 
minds  whose  rectangular  plan  of  life  and  brick-wall 
horizon  have  dulled  a  whole  province  of  perception, 
whose  alternations  of  stuffy  chambers  and  muddy 
pavements  have  plugged  the  finer  senses  as  with 
an  eternal  catarrh  ?  Oh  tyrant  London,  blear-eyed 
blunderer,  coarse-thumbed  handler  of  fine-spun 
destinies  with  whose  right  twining  the  very  life  of 
all  that  monstrous  bulk  is  involved,  learn  before  it 
is  too  late  to  lighten  the  touch  of  those  ponderous 
fingers.  Learn  for  your  own  sake  that  there  are 
qualities  not  to  be  found  in  your  ganglion  of  the 
national  life,  yet  vital  to  the  whole  body, — reserve, 
caution,  slow-seasoned  grain  and  fibre,  an  absence 
of  "  nerves ; "  learn  that  the  nursery-ground  of 
country  solitude  and  silence  is  an  essential  pre- 
paratory to  your  forcing-house.  You  would 
understand,  if  you  could  but  get  the  incantation 
of  the  "central  roar"  out  of  your  ears,  that  the 
country  is  something  more  than  a  mere  appendage 
of  town,  a  convenient  sanatorium  or  playgroun4 
192 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

for  street-folk,  a  rubbish-heap  for  your  waste 
humanity  and  bye-products  of  crime  and  insanity. 
We  in  the  wilderness  have  already  more  than 
enough  of  your  off-scourings ;  now  we  hear  of 
workmen's  colonies,  of  factories  to  be  brought  out 
into  the  fields,  to  save  the  congestion  of  the  centre. 
It  is  all  incredibly  foolish :  artisans'  plantations 
and  cheap  trains,  boarded-out  children,  fortnights 
in  the  country,  deported  manufactures  all  merely 
cut  the  tree  at  the  roots  and  foul  the  stream  at  the 
source.  If  London  cannot  be  made  in  itself  a 
habitable  city,  it  may  as  well  be  asphyxiated  at 
once  in  its  own  exhalations  as  try  to  elude  the 
fates  by  pouring  its  filth  into  the  one  source  of 
saving  health  which  at  present  keeps  it  alive. 

The  time  will  come,  not  a  doubt  of  it,  when  the 
preservation  of  the  country,  body  and  soul,  will 
quite  suddenly  appear  to  our  governing  orders  as  a 
really  imperative  thing ;  and  then  that  precise 
amount  of  energy  will  be  spent  in  vain  whose 
square-root  would  at  a  certain  conjunction  have 
comfortably  secured  the  result.  We  shall  recog- 
nise the  country  as  at  least  an  equal  in  partnership 
with  the  city  ;  there  will  be  revolutions  in  methods 
of  education  and  local  government,  and  we  shall 
see  all  manner  of  sumptuary  laws  and  desperate 
encouragements  of  agriculture.  Finally,  we  shall 
go  forth  in  the  guise  of  a  Royal  Commission  to 
discover  the  lost  secret  of  national  existence ;  and 
— unless  some  rare  chance  is  to  divert  our  usual 

193  O 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

mode — after  much  gathering  and  classifying  of 
information,  we  shall  find  that  we  are  just  too  late  ; 
that  the  secret  is  buried  somewhere  in  the  unturned 
London  Clay ;  and  as  we  go  back  to  town  through 
the  waste  fields  we  may  perhaps  catch  an  echo  of 
the  rumour  once  heard  in  an  older  Boeotia — 

oXX*  olv  Qeobs 
rovs  TT)S  a\o^ffijs  ir6\€os  efcXe/Tretj/  \6yos. 

"A  whisper  goes, 
The  gods  forsake  the  city  to  her  foes." 


I94 


XVIII 

September  I. 

COMING  home  yesterday  morning  from  a  visit 
to  old  Tully  at  the  Vachery,  I  found  myself,  as  I 
crossed  the  common  at  Beggar's  Bush,  engaged 
once  more  in  an  attempt  which  I  knew  at  heart 
to  be  in  vain,  trying  to  make  the  familiar  land- 
scape yield  up  something  of  the  inner  beauty 
which  it  can  put  forth  at  its  own  hours.  The 
day  was  clear  and  keen,  with  a  somewhat  garish 
sun  and  quick-pacing  cloud  shadows ;  all  colour 
was  pale  and  a  little  opaque.  The  long  line  of  the 
Downs  that  lay  like  a  grey  vapour  above  the  pale 
brown  purples  of  the  ridged  Weald  ;  the  clump  of 
wind-bitten  firs  that  tops  the  hill — a  landmark 
that  has  taken  its  part  in  many  an  un forgotten 
composition — were  alike  otiose  and  inert  All 
endeavours  to  conjure  the  latent  spirit  by  insisting 
on  this  piece  of  colour  or  that  sweep  of  wooded 
valley  only  recoiled  in  a  dull  dissatisfaction  ;  and 
in  due  time  I  came  to  acknowledge  that  it  was 
one  of  those  days  when  a  veil  lies  over  the  land- 
scape or  some  hebetude  dulls  the  eye  ;  or  when, 
as  I  have  at  times  thought,  there  is  some  undivined 
195 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

collusion  between  the  seer  and  the  seen,  and  the 
vision  is  at  once  withheld  and  foregone. 

So  for  perhaps  the  hundredth  time  I  gave  up 
the  attempt,  and  told  myself  once  more  how 
wholly  vain  is  any  purposed  hunting  for  that  finer 
spiritual  beauty  of  a  scene.  The  very  thought  of 
intent  seems  to  shut  sevenfold  gates  upon  the 
magic  realm  that  lies  so  close  upon  our  road. 
Make  your  planned  and  deliberate  expedition,  a 
day's  trudge  through  the  hills — even  a  week  in 
spring,  it  may  be,  among  Surrey  commons  and 
green  roads — and  come  home  with  your  indolent 
recollection  of  things  seen,  commonplaces  staled 
by  a  hundred  old  walks;  then,  looking  back  by 
chance  from  your  doorstep  you  shall  see  perhaps 
only  a  fast-fading  streak  of  rosy  cloud,  the  end  of 
a  sunset  which  had  left  you  cold,  or  a  mass  of 
trees  darkening  against  a  rainy  sky  ;  but  at  once 
you  feel  the  touch  of  authentic  divinity,  a  power 
to  which  your  vacant  perceptions  answer  instantly 
and  absolutely.  All  the  day  you  were  a  con- 
noisseur, a  virtuoso,  and  Nature  evaded  you  at 
every  turn  ;  at  the  close  you  forget  the  quest,  and 
she  suddenly  gives  you  a  sign  which  in  itself  opens 
your  eyes  to  see,  a  revelation  which  as  it  comes 
adds  itself  to  the  number  of  the  unforgettable 
things. 

The  day  being,  as  I  said,  a  dead  one,  I  let  my 
humour  have  its  analytic  bent.  Those  deeper 
manifestations  have  no  discoverable  law  qr  rule ; 
196 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

at  most  it  can  be  said  of  them  that  the  degree  of 
their  power  is  connected  with  their  suddenness  and 
their  transience.  There  is  no  season  or  hour  when 
they  may  not  be  looked  for;  but  perhaps  there 
are  some  sorts  of  weather  in  which  they  are  less 
likely  to  occur ; — times  of  repose  and  settled  face, 
such  as  a  sunless  and  windless  November  noon, 
a  cloudless  drought,  or  even  those  days  of  rich 
and  sustained  beauty,  in  the  ordinary  sense  of  the 
word,  which  almost  always  come  in  June.  They 
are  more  frequent,  no  doubt,  at  the  spring  and  the 
close  of  the  day  than  in  its  middle  ;  but  they  are 
not  dependent  upon  the  more  dramatic  changes 
of  light  and  colour :  they  are  to  be  found  not  only 
in  the  sudden  sunset-break  which  fires  a  mountain- 
side and  fills  the  valleys  with  smouldering  crimson 
mist,  but  in  the  quiet  fall  of  a  drenched  autumnal 
evening,  when  the  grass  lightens  a  little  to  the 
slackening  shower  and  a  bar  of  greenish  sky  shines 
between  the  stems  of  the  black-glooming  wood. 
Even  the  dreariest  of  grey  twilights  may  at  the 
last  moment  lift  a  corner  of  the  veil  to  show  a 
mist-blurred  star,  a  swarthy  flush  of  afterglow, 
enough  to  let  the  ambient  mystery  in  upon  the 
spirit. 

The  more  a  man  betakes  himself  to  watching 
and  following  the  beauty  of  earth,  the  better  he 
knows  that  it  is  not  a  constant  quantity,  as  many 
seem  to  think,  always  at  command  the  moment 
he  goes  out-of-doors.  Any  one  who  has  paid 
197 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

his  due  service  to  the  Ilissus  or  the  Melian 
Aphrodite  knows  that  even  a  statue  has  its 
moods ;  as  to  the  appeal  of  a  landscape  under 
the  momentary  changes  of  the  season  and  the 
hour,  it  is  strange  if  we  shall  catch  it  twice  in 
altogether  the  same  mode.  The  most  we  can 
do  is  to  wait,  keeping  a  clear  mind,  seeing  to  it 
that  no  internal  distraction  cloud  or  warp  the 
mirror's  surface.  Though  all  deliberate  intent 
most  surely  destroys  its  own  ends,  yet  there  are 
preparatories  which  contribute  to  the  result — a 
"  wise  passiveness ; "  idleness,  in  its  too  little 
understood  virtuous  side  ;  a  temper  of  vacation 
perhaps  innate  ;  an  eye  not  bent  formally  on  its 
object,  but  turned  a  little  askance  from  it,  finding 
it  as  stars  fading  in  the  daybreak  may  be  found 
by  looking  a  little  beside  them.  There  must  be, 
of  course,  a  general  faith  in  the  coming  and  going 
of  divinity ;  but  no  peering  here  and  there  for  the 
symbols.  The  matter  in  hand  most  go  on,  like 
Nestor's  sacrifice  by  the  seashore;  the  quiet 
morning  hour  proceed  with  its  reverent  common 
forms  of  the  rite  ;  the  lads  must  be  there,  the  ox, 
the  chieftain,  the  goldsmith  with  his  tools ;  and 
then,  unheralded  among  the  rest,  silently,  the  last 
at  the  solemnity — 

3\0e  5'  'A07JV77 
Ipwv  a.VTi6wcra. 

But  yesterday  was  altogether  one  of  the  fast- 
days,  and  I  shut  my  door  without  having  gained 

198 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

the  least  suggestion  of  any  finer  illumination  be- 
hind the  common  scene.  Something  of  the  trivial 
hour  seemed  to  infect  the  course  of  one's  thoughts, 
and  once  or  twice  the  doubt  came  whether  all  this 
care  and  observation  of  natural  beauty  is  not,  after 
all,  a  morbid  activity,  a  crasis  of  the  over-wrought 
modern  mind.  "You,"  said  the  ill-conditioned 
fancy,  "  mewed  up  with  your  books  and  your 
theories,  palpitating  at  some  one's  review,  or  irri- 
tated by  some  one  else's  new  adjective,  it  is  you 
who  breed  these  subtleties  of  vision  and  heats  of 
appreciation.  To  the  great  old  men  who  put  down 
the  foundations  you  pile  your  flimsy  structures  on, 
the  world  was  well  enough,  the  sky  was  blue  and 
grass  was  green,  sun  and  stars  and  seas  and  winds 
had  their  uses ;  at  most  the  sunrise  or  the  storm- 
cloud  got  an  epithet,  a  workmanlike  label  to  serve 
through  twenty-four  books  of  epic.  It  is  only 
now,  when  your  neurotic  multitudes,  who  never 
once  in  their  lives  drew  a  full  breath  or  stepped  a 
wholesome  stride,  it  is  only  when  the  atrophied 
creatures  huddle  together  in  interminable  streets 
that  the  sense  of  Nature-worship  is  born." 

The  peevish  thought  was  not  to  be  answered 
off-hand.  It  is,  after  all,  only  the  course  of  Nature 
that  people  who  walk  a  certain  length  of  familiar 
pavement  day  by  day  the  year  round,  and  see,  if 
they  ever  look  up,  a  narrow  strip  of  firmament, 
hazy-hlue  in  a  garish  sunlight  or  orange-dun  in 
fog,  should  like  to  hear  about  green  lanes  and 

199 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

turquoise  skies ;  just  as  the  converse  holds  good, 
that  ninety-nine  of  the  folk  whose  ways  lead, 
summer  and  winter,  through  green  lanes,  and 
whose  roof  from  light  to  dusk  is  the  open  heaven, 
quite  largely  fail  to  appreciate  the  beauties  spread 
about  them.  It  is,  perhaps,  not  too  rude  a  pro- 
position to  say  that  the  expatiation  is  in  inverse 
proportion  to  the  knowledge.  It  seems  as  though 
the  difference  in  detail  of  scene-painting  between 
the  moderns  and  the  older  men  were  connected 
with  the  degree  of  intimacy  with  Nature  possessed 
by  their  several  publics.  The  archaic  colourist, 
writing  for  his  sunburnt,  outdoor  critics,  set  his 
conventional  mark  on  sea  or  sky — oivom  TTOI/TT^ 
or  a<T7T£roe  alOrip  ;  it  is  left  to  the  modern  Acade- 
mician to  give  us — breathing  the  dusty  smell  of 
the  reading-room  while  the  electric  lights  sicken 
in  the  shrouding  fog — a  sky  "  or  sur  or  ;  les  nuages 
d'un  or  clair  et  comme  incandescent  sur  un  fond 
byzantin  d'or  mat  et  terni,"  or  "  la  mer  .  .  .  d'une 
certaine  nuance  bleu  paon  avec  des  reflets  de  mdtal 
chaud."  In  face  of  such  achievements  as  these,  it 
seems  hardly  doubtful  that  our  seers  and  prophets 
— wheresoever  their  hearers  may  stand — have  dis- 
covered whole  new  worlds  in  the  notation  of 
natural  beauty.  Yet  there  are  arguments  in  the 
contrary  sense  which  at  least  deserve  a  hearing. 
We  are,  perhaps,  too  ready  to  impute  to  all  other 
ages  our  peculiar  manner  of  putting  all  our  strength 
in  the  front  rank,  or,  to  use  a  comparison  that  is 
200 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

perhaps  apter  to  the  case,  all  our  wares  in  the 
window ;  it  rarely  seems  to  occur  to  us  that  there 
may  be  any  limit  to  an  author's  reach  other  than 
his  power.  It  is  at  least  possible  that  Homer's 
sea  had  that  monotonous  wine-colour,  instead  of 
peacock-blue  and  all  the  rest  of  the  inexhaustible 
palette,  by  a  quite  deliberate  choice. 

And  the  earlier  fashion  of  summary  notation  has 
evident  virtues  of  its  own  ;  it  may  be  found  to  be 
the  only  possible  vehicle  for  the  conveying  of  those 
rarer  manifestations  of  light  and  form,  always  swift 
and  evanescent  in  proportion  to  their  force.  In 
the  nice  choosing  of  adjectives,  the  search  for 
synonyms  and  the  projection  of  minute  detail 
there  lies  the  risk  that  the  impatient  spirit  elude 
us,  and  we  find  the  image  we  would  record  hang 
as  a  dead  weight  of  matter  on  our  hands.  A 
single  classic  phrase — an  epithet,  even — may  sug- 
gest more  than  a  page  of  laboured  "  word-painting" 
can  realize :  the  one  is  allusive,  an  indication,  so 
to  say,  between  friends  with  a  common  stock  of 
quick-answering  knowledge ;  the  other  too  often 
seems  but  a  careful  and  partly  conscious  endeavour 
to  convey  the  detail  of  a  scene  to  minds  which 
cannot  take  a  hint,  nor  fill  in  an  outline  from  the 
stores  of  their  own  memory.  One  line  of  the 
classics  may  present,  to  the  man  who  knows,  a 
sense  of  the  thing  meant,  much  in  the  same  way, 
and  as  absolutely,  as  the  wet  blur  or  solid  blot  of 
Turner's  latest  power  gives  its  sense,  with  a  kind 
201 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

of  shorthand  which  alone  is  quick  enough  for  the 
fading  light  or  the  flung-out  curve.  That  qualify- 
ing clause  "  to  the  man  who  knows,"  is  perhaps  the 
key  to  the  difference  between  the  two  methods. 
The  man  who  has  the  breath  to  take  him  up 
mountain-sides,  and  the  eyes,  when  the  summit 
is  gained,  to  look  behind  him  and  below,  does  not 
need  a  chapter  to  recall  the  vision  when  he  has 
come  down  to  the  plain  again  ;  a  line,  a  pregnant 
word  will  be  enough  ;  Pindar's 

'Ap/caStos 
Kal 


or,  to  fetch  a  parallel  from  the  other  extreme  of 
the  compass,  Martial's 

Et  curvas  nebula  tegente  valles 

will  afford  him  all  he  needs. 

So  far  went  my  analysis,  filling  up,  as  such 
exercises  are  surely  meant  to  do,  the  dead  spaces 
wherein  we  know  no  gods  ^aivovrai  tvapyeie- 
During  the  afternoon,  given  solidly  to  the  garden, 
there  were  intimations  that  the  day  and  the 
personal  humour  were  both  shaping  towards  better 
things.  About  dusk,  when  the  digging  had  been 
fairly  put  through,  I  took  a  turn  along  the  high- 
road and  dropped  a  little  way  down  the  first  steep 
pitch  of  Withypits  Lane  ;  and  there,  with  my 
mind  mainly  running,  I  think,  on  the  couch-grass 
roots  which  I  had  been  wrestling  with,  I  came 
upon,  or  there  came  upon  me,  in  the  dull  close  of 
202 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

the  undistinguished  day  upon  the  landscape  seen 
a  thousand  times  before,  such  a  vision  of  inner 
beauty  as  I  had  tried  to  evoke  all  through  the 
morning's  walk.  The  scene  was  but  the  plan  of 
the  hillside  over  against  me,  the  steep  fields  that 
drop  to  the  brook  in  the  bottom,  the  remembered 
pattern  of  their  hedges,  their  solitary  oaks,  the 
long  wood  that  crowns  the  ridge :  in  how  many 
evening  walks  had  I  seen  it  all  under  the  last  of 
the  sunset,  darkening  to  a  plane  of  dun-green 
shade,  utterly  silent  and  without  the  least  stirring 
of  life  ?  I  had  turned  out  of  the  lane,  a  few  paces 
across  the  grass  to  the  familiar  gateway,  and  as  I 
leaned  on  the  grey  lichen-shagged  bar  the  senses 
— not  immediately,  but  after  a  minute's  looking — 
suddenly  penetrate  or  are  penetrated  ;  the  world 
is  transformed  to  a  visage  it  never  showed  before, 
and  will  not  show  again.  The  smooth  green  fields, 
the  dark  mass  of  the  wood,  the  pale  spaces  of  sky 
and  barred  cloud  reaching  towards  the  north  in  a 
moment  put  forth  their  hidden  power.  One  can 
but  look  and  look,  drawing  quiet  breath  as  though 
uninitiate  and  unawares  chancing  upon  some 
temple  -  mystery  ;  the  slack-ordered  thoughts, 
tangled  a  moment  ago  between  a  half-mechanic 
recollection  of  something  heard  or  read,  and  the 
lazy  aim  that  switched  at  the  nettles  in  the  hedge, 
fall  at  once  into  a  wide-eyed  calm,  the  very  spirit 
of  receptiveness,  a  lulling  pleasure  into  which  they 
sink  as  into  the  depths  of  happy-dreaming  sleep. 
203 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

Every  part  of  the  scene  is  wrought  to  a  meaning 
of  serene  good  ;  the  hedged  fields,  the  white  cot- 
tage that  shows  like  a  light  on  the  dusky  green  of 
the  pastures,  signify  the  grace  of  life  in  ordered 
work  and  ease ;  the  mounded  oaks  stand  like 
towers  of  solemn  strength  ;  the  earth-haze  above 
the  fallen  sun,  swarthy  orange  with  the  reek  of 
the  dead  day,  cannot  stain  the  immense  clearness 
of  the  western  sky.  Such  things  as  these,  the 
approaches  and  degrees  to  the  central  light,  come 
back  to  the  mind  that  tries  to  recall  the  vision 
when  it  has  passed :  the  supreme  mythus  divined 
behind  the  symbol  is  beyond  the  speech  even  of 
thought. 

The  lifted  veil  quickly  falls  again.  The  fire  dies 
out  of  the  afterglow,  the  clouds  fade  from  their 
last  pale  purples  to  cold  grey ;  but  spite  of  the 
visible  passing  of  the  glory,  the  watcher  surmises 
of  a  shadow  that  rises  within  himself;  the  senses 
tire,  under  the  stretch  of  a  greater  effort  of  per- 
ception than  he  had  conceived  of.  The  vision 
passes  ;  but  just  before  it  goes,  there  comes  a 
motion  of  the  will  to  grasp  and  hold  the  moment 
as  it  falls  away,  a  sudden  pang  of  regret,  irrational 
and  unaccountable,  akin  to  that  strong  pathos 
which  sometimes  comes  in  watching  the  highest 
human  beauty.  It  is  easy  to  think  of  this  as  the 
mere  heart-ache  for  our  own  transitoriness  set 
against  the  changeless  shows  of  earth  ;  but  those 
who  have  felt  it  think  that  goes  deeper  than  any 
204 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

syllogism  of  our  making,  has  a  reference  beyond 
this  frame  of  things. 

When  past  any  doubt  the  illumination  is  over, 
there  is  perhaps  a  momentary  endeavour  to  catch 
the  secret  again,  as  one  sometimes  wishes  to  catch 
the  broken  end  of  a  dream.  But  the  thought  is 
abandoned  as  it  comes ;  it  is  best  to  turn  resolutely 
away  from  the  gate  and  leave  the  uninspired  face 
of  the  hillside,  the  mist  rising  along  the  brook,  the 
last  glimmer  of  the  west  between  the  pillars  of  the 
wood.  Turn  away  up  the  lane  again  ;  and  while 
you  feel  a  sort  of  wonder  at  an  ineffectiveness,  a 
sense  of  fault  in  all  you  see,  in  the  dully  reddening 
ranges  of  eastern  cloud,  in  the  uncouth  shapes  of 
trees,  in  the  landscape  where  thwarted  Nature  and 
the  indolent  works  of  men  interact  in  a  confused 
meanness,  let  the  mind  go  back  along  the  trace  of 
the  lost  beauty,  perhaps  to  find  a  consolation,  per- 
functory but  not  unserviceable  for  the  darkened 
way,  in  the  fancy  of  some  inheritance  or  right, 
implied  in  that  vain  regret. 


205 


XIX 

September  10. 

IT  is  a  weary  business  waiting  for  rain  in  a  droughty 
summer,  watching  morning  after  morning  the  cloud- 
less blue,  or  worse,  the  illusory  shows  of  breaking 
weather  and  blessed  showers  in  the  windward, 
which  raise  and  dash  our  hopes  from  hour  to  hour. 
There  is  a  last  worst  state,  when  hope  is  tired, 
or  too  wise  to  stir,  when  the  harm  is  done,  the 
broccoli  or  the  begonias  past  recovery,  and  the 
ultimate  downpour  becomes  a  matter  of  compara- 
tive indifference.  It  is  not  very  good  for  the 
temper  to  muse  in  this  strain  amid  one's  wilting 
greenstuff  and  dusty  seed-beds,  while  the  very 
privets  and  laurels  hang  limp  leaves,  and  the  lawn 
is  seared  to  a  greyish  brown.  Walks  across  fields 
and  by  wood  paths  are  better  than  the  accustomed 
saunterings  in  one's  own  domain ;  the  whole 
country  is  waste  and  sere,  and  the  time  is  an 
interregnum ;  the  stubbles  are  too  hard  for  the 
plough,  the  meadows  are  fed  almost  bare ;  the 
woods  stand  a  dark  and  lifeless  green  and  begin 
to  drop  their  leaves,  shrivelled  before  they  are, 
206 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

faded.  It  is  not  a  much  happier  prospect  than 
the  garden  offers ;  but  at  least  one  leaves  one's 
private  responsibilities  behind  one  at  the  gate. 
I  was  out  lately  on  one  of  these  turns  towards 
the  Vachery,  and  fell  in  with  Mrs.  Ventom  on  her 
way  home  from  market.  The  pony  having  cast 
a  shoe,  she  had  walked  and  carried  her  butter 
baskets  all  the  way  to  Tisfield.  The  burden  had 
taken  nothing  out  of  the  spring  of  her  step  or 
the  spare  uprightness  of  her  carriage  ;  but  I  think 
it  had  contributed  to  a  slight  and  quite  permissible 
roughness  in  her  temper.  An  encounter  in  the 
market  with  some  one  who,  I  judged,  must  have 
been  aTra/ooKaXoe,  unblest  with  the  finer  instincts, 
seemed  to  have  ruffled  her  wonted  calm.  The 
lady — whose  butter  was  notorious  in  all  the  parish, 
whose  whole  experience  came  out  of  half  a  dozen 
County  Council  lectures  on  dairying — had  in  open 
market  expressed  doubts  as  to  the  keeping  quali- 
ties of  the  Burntoak  consignment,  and  had  advised 
Mrs.  Ventom — Mrs.  Ventom — to  use  more  salt, 
and  take  more  care  about  the  making  up.  "  I  had 
it  on  my  tongue  to  say  something  we  should 
both  have  been  sorry  for ;  but  there,"  says  the 
widow,  "I  thought  of  her  mother,  that  I  taught 
to  make  butter  long  before  she  was  thought  of: 
one  of  the  old  sort,  before  they'd  been  long  enough 
away  from  Nymans  to  forget  what  they'd  been 
themselves.  Well-to-do  people,  the  Luxfords 
always  were,  of  course ;  but  the  grandfather  just 
207 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

a  tenant  farmer.  The  old  people  were  not  the 
sort  to  shake  their  pockets  at  you,  though  they 
came  into  money  twice,  and  had  more  than  they 
rightly  knew  what  to  do  with.  There's  hundreds 
more  about  like  her  now  ;  and  'tis  only  themselves 
out  of  the  whole  country  that  don't  know  the 
difference  from  the  real  old  families.  Some  learn 
it  quicker  than  others  ;  there's  the  Miss  Walcots, 
now :  their  grandfather  was  miller  at  Westingham 
when  the  Luxfords  were  at  Nymans,  but  they're 
the  real  thing  right  through — leastways  Miss 
Fanny  is:  and  Mrs.  Sims-Bigg,  she'd  never  be 
what  you'd  call  a  lady,  not  if  she  lived  to  be  a 
hundred.  And  it's  not  so  much  what  she  said. 
I've  known  people  a  good  deal  rougher  with  their 
tongues,  that  you  knew  were  all  right  the  first 
word  they  spoke.  Look  at  Miss  Enderby,  now ; 
she  can  be  sharp  enough,  but  you've  only  got 
to  hear  her  and  Mrs.  Sims-Bigg  together.  But 
she  can  be  sharp,  too.  She  was  up  at  Burntoak 
last  week,  and  she  saw  two  texts  that  I'd  put  up 
over  the  dresser;  my  niece  had  sent  them  me — 
'  Cast  thy  burden/  and  '  Though  I  walk  through 
the  valley/  all  in  colours  and  gilt — pretty,  I 
reckoned  them — and  she  said,  '  I  'see  you're  like 
other  folk ;  nailing  up  texts  on  the  wall  out  of 
the  way,  so's  you  shouldn't  break  your  shins  over 
them/  But  the  sharpest  thing  I  ever  heard  her 
say  was  to  the  Vicar,  when  we'd  been  talking 
about  Tom  Finch,  that  robbed  his  grandmother 
.208 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

of  her  bit  of  savings,  and  his  wife  that  used  to 
shut  the  children  out  at  night,  and  pumped  on 
the  little  one  when  it  was  freezing.  '  It's  only 
very  cruel  people,'  she  said,  '  that  don't  believe 
in  Hell.'  The  Vicar  coughed,  and  said  something 
about  Christian  charity.  He'd  been  much  too  easy 
with  the  Finches  all  along,  some  people  thought ; 
and  Miss  Mary  looked  at  him  as  she  knows  how 
to  look,  and  said,  '  I  wasn't  thinking  of  Tom  Finch 
and  his  wife,  Mr.  Blenkinsopp.'  It's  not  so  much 
what's  said,"  Mrs.  Ventom  radically  concludes, 
"  it's  the  one  that  says  it."  I  thought  of  Pamela 
Andrews'  view  of  the  matter :  "  but  they  are  ladies, 
and  ladies  may  say  anything." 

All  this  was  unwontedly  philosophic  for  the 
mistress  of  the  farm ;  and  we  soon  came  down 
to  more  solid  ground.  The  drought  is  a  sore 
burden  ;  water  has  to  be  carried  to  the  stock  from 
the  brook  half  a  mile  away,  and  the  house-supply 
has  given  out.  "  There's  damp  enough  under  the 
floors,"  says  Mrs.  Ventom  ;  "  I  couldn't  keep  a 
carpet  on  the  bricks  in  the  kitchen,  if  I  wanted 
to  :  as  I  told  the  agent  the  last  time  I  sent  the 
rent,  the  well's  about  the  only  dry  place  on  the 
property.  And  next  week,  for  all  we  know,  we 
may  have  the  floods  out  in  the  bottoms,  and 
buckets  in  the  best  bedroom  to  catch  the  wet 
coming  through  the  roof.  We're  always  in  trouble 
one  way  or  the  other.  Most  people  seem  to  think 
trouble  can  only  hurt  you  one  way ;  but,"  says 
209  P 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

the  widow,  with  one  of  her  material  comparisons 
from  the  works  of  Nature,  "  'tis  like  boot-laces ; 
it  frets  us  if  they're  too  tight,  and  it  frets  us  pretty 
nearly  as  much  if  they're  too  loose." 

By  this  we  had  come  to  the  path  which  cuts 
the  meadows  towards  Burntoak,  and  our  ways 
parted.  I  held  the  gate  open  for  Mrs.  Ventom 
and  her  baskets,  and  received  one  of  her  magni- 
ficent sweeping  curtseys,  baskets  and  all,  that 
majestic  sinking  and  recovery  which  I  should  sup- 
pose would  make  Mrs.  Sims-Bigg's  fortune  at  a 
Drawing-Room — the  hereditary  obeisance  which 
the  widow  maintains  in  a  sort  of  jealous  pride — I 
had  almost  said  insolence — in  knowing  her  station  ; 
it  is  possible  that  it  has  for  her  a  connection  with 
old  fashions,  greater  than  ours ;  in  some  cases, 
perhaps,  it  might  express  a  lurking  sarcasm.  I 
should  like  very  much  to  have  seen  the  curtsey 
she  gave  Mrs.  Sims-Bigg  in  Tisfield  market  after 
that  reflection  on  the  Burntoak  butter. 

When  I  came  to  the  Vachery  I  found  Jethro 
Tully  thatching  one  of  his  own  clover  stacks.  The 
one  decent  thatcher  in  the  parish  was  busy  at 
Naldretts  fresh-healing  the  barn.  Tully  was  not 
going  to  have  his  job  done  by  either  of  the 
other  two  impostors  who  profess  the  craft.  So,  as 
rain  might  come  along  any  time,  he  reckoned  as 
how  he'd  got  to  do  it  himself.  I  sat  on  the  stack- 
yard rails  and  watched  him  finish  off  the  job, 
quick,  thorough,  neat-handed  work,  without  waste 
210 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 


or  haste.  Here  was  skilled  labour,  at  any  rate — 
the  drawing  out  of  the  straw  from  the  heap,  the 
laying  of  it  straight  with  light,  quick  ringers,  the 
fastening  of  the  bundle  in  the  clam,  or  carrier, 
the  quantity  exactly  sufficient  for  the  space  to 
be  covered,  judged  after  an  instant's  measurement 
with  the  eye  from  below ;  the  unhesitating  laying 
on,  combing  down  and  binding  in  with  the  thatch- 
ing-rods ;  the  finishing  touches  to  the  edges  with 
the  shears;  all  this  very  pleasantly  satisfied  my 
taste  for  seeing  anything  thoroughly  well  done. 
When  Tully  had  the  whole  thing  to  his  mind,  he 
came  over  to  where  I  was  sitting,  straightening  him- 
self very  gingerly  ;  and  leaning  on  the  fence,  began 
to  accuse  the  disjointed  times  which  reduced  him, 
with  twenty  other  things  to  look  after,  to  thatch- 
ing his  own  stacks.  It  was  all  depressingly  per- 
spicuous ;  the  old  ones,  that  had  learnt  what  work 
meant,  dropped  off  one  by  one,  and  the  young 
ones  were  never  taught  naun  but  school-learning, 
and  smoking  cigarettes  and  sarcing  their  betters. 
'Tis  all  made  easy  for  'em  now;  but  he  reckons 
there's  some  things  as  is  only  to  be  learned  by 
hard  work  and  taking  pains.  He  used  to  walk 
three  miles  to  his  work  every  day  at  his  first 
place,  and  that  meant  getting  up  at  four,  and  back 
after  seven.  He  was  put  on  to  mow  with  the 
men  when  he  was  seventeen  ;  and  you  got  to  keep 
up  with  'em  somehow,  and  learn  to  sharp  properly. 
There  isn't  a  boy  in  the  school  now,  he  'spects, 
211 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

that  could  sharp  a  scythe  or  a  hook,  let  alone 
mow.  They  don't  look  to  things ;  'tis  all  ready- 
made  and  take-it-easy ;  why  ne'er  he  nor  his 
father  afore  him  ever  bought  a  scythe-sned  ;  they'd 
look  out  for  a  likely  piece  of  hazel  when  they 
were  in  the  woods,  and  then  at  the  right  time 
they'd  go  and  cut  it  for  themselves.  And  choosing 
a  scythe-blade,  now ;  people  didn't  seem  to  see 
no  difference.  Well,  when  he  went  to  pick  one, 
he'd  wait  for  a  sunshiny  day,  and  hold  it  up 
'twixt  him  and  the  sun,  so's  the  light  fell  on  the 
edge,  and  then,  if  it  looked  as  blue  as  a  hare- 
bell, you  could  be  pretty  sure  that  was  a  good 
one.  So  with  knives;  he'd  often  been  asked  to 
choose  'em  for  people,  when  he  was  going  into 
Tisfield. 

I  thought  of  the  thing  defined  as  an  infinite 
capacity  for  taking  pains,  and  wondered  what 
polar  quality  may  be  denoted  by  a  nation's  being 
mainly  concerned  to  avoid  all  sort  of  pains  or 
trouble  whatsoever.  Tully,  I  think,  would  have 
no  hesitation  as  to  its  results ;  there  is  the  con- 
crete product  before  his  eyes  in  the  shape  of  his 
grandson  Herbert  or  Erb.  Erb,  at  the  age  when 
his  grandfather  was  set  to  weed  in  the  fields  and 
mind  horses,  began  to  exercise  his  mind  with  re- 
creative beads  and  bits  of  stick  under  a  Government 
syllabus,  and  thereafter  grew  nine  years  in  the 
atmosphere  of  the  school  stove  and  the  odour  of 
unscrubbed  humanity,  under  the  influence  of  the 
212 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

blackboard  and  its  chalky  duster,  and  so  became 
qualified  to  parse  and  do  mental  arithmetic  and 
sing  sol-fa,  until  he  is  projected  complete  upon 
the  world,  an  under-sized,  weedy  cub,  with  small 
show  of  manners  or  morals,  with  one  gift  of  shirk- 
ing laziness  developed  in  his  atrophied  little  brain. 
He  has  been  sent  away  to  three  or  four  good 
places,  and  after  a  few  weeks  in  each  is  back  again 
with  his  cigarette  and  his  halfpenny  paper  on  the 
wall  by  the  pond,  the  gathering-place  for  all  the 
tribe  of  skulkers,  already  something  of  a  parish 
care  and  nuisance.  If  he  had  had  the  learning 
of  him,  says  old  Tully,  he'd  have  made  something 
different  of  him.  For  my  part,  I  doubt  it.  I 
cannot  picture  to  myself  Erb  turning  out  at  five 
o'clock,  keeping  up  with  the  mowers,  or  learning 
to  choose  a  scythe :  the  creature  that  I  know, 
under-sized  and  ill-knit,  bleached  by  indoor  air 
and  soul-stunted  by  indoor  thinking,  with  his 
stick-up  collars  and  fourpenny  satin  ties,  his 
cherished  forelock,  his  language  and  his  literature, 
is  of  another  birth,  a  changeling  from  the  stock 
of  those  old  breakers  of  the  glebe.  He  judge  a 
scythe-blade  by  the  blue  glimmer  on  the  edge? 
He  can't  even  distinguish  the  tastes  of  the  various 
poisons  in  his  cigarettes. 

They  won't  work  nowadays,  says  Tully ;  not  on 

the  land.     They  don't  seem  to  mind  dirty  jobs, 

or  being  in  shops,  and  all  that ;  but  what  he  calls 

real  pleasant  work,  they  won't  have  naun  of  it. 

213 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

I  remind  him  of  a  modern  instance.  Our  neigh- 
bours at  Tisfield  have — after  the  usual  preliminaries 
of  a  newspaper  warfare,  party-committees,  insinua- 
tions and  recriminations,  a  Local  Government 
Inquiry  and  a  loan — embarked  upon  an  ambitious 
scheme  of  drains.  During  the  laying  of  the  main 
sewer  they  managed  to  asphyxiate  one  navvy  in 
the  drain;  and  to  blow  another  to  tatters  with  a 
dynamite  cartridge.  The  applicants  for  the 
vacancies  thus  created  were  ten  deep ;  but  as 
Tully  says,  for  real  pleasant  work  you  can  hardly 
get  a  man  to  look  at  the  job.  He  reckons  It's 
better  for  a  man  to  be  on  the  top  of  a  stack  than 
down  a  sullage-pipe ;  but  there,  you  can't  never 
tell.  Seems  as  if  they  were  reg'lar  frightened  of 
being  out-o'-doors  now. 

I  told  him  that  people  had  lately  proposed  that 
agriculture  should  be  taught  in  country  schools. 
He  smiled  a  little  stiffly,  as  one  smiles  at  the  bad 
jokes  of  one's  friends ;  and  then  I  quoted  the 
opinion  of  a  great  doctor  of  educational  science 
which  I  had  lately  read,  denouncing  as  reactionary 
and  obscurantist  any  attempt  to  specialise  the 
curriculum  of  elementary  education  before  the  age 
of  fourteen.  I  put  it  to  Tully  in  less  specialised 
English  than  is  usually  affected  by  the  people  who 
call  themselves  educationalists,  and  was  pleased 
to  find  that  the  objection  which  had  occurred  to 
me  was  the  first  in  his  mind.  "'Tis  people  like 
that/'  says  Tully,  "that  are  killing  the  country. 
214 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 


I  don't  set  out  to  know  how  any  one  can  be  such 
a  fool  as  to  think  ye  can  start  to  teach  a  boy 
farming  when  he's  fourteen,  let  alone  filling  his 
head  with  everything  else  first  that  he  won't  never 
want ;  but  there,  if  you  tell  me  as  the  gentleman 
said  it,  I  suppose  'tis  so ;  but  I  do  reckon  people 
like  that  ought  to  be  shet  up."  Shutting-up,  in 
Tully's  mouth,  has  not  the  mere  colloquial  sense 
of  suppression :  it  means  Bedlam  ;  and  when  one 
thinks  a  little  on  that  excited  defence  of  the 
existing  plan  of  extreme  specialisation,  by  which 
a  boy  is  sedulously  nursed  into  the  desire  of 
a  black  coat  and  an  office  stool,  and  a  taste 
for  halfpenny  periodicals,  and  then,  with  this 
precious  birthright  assured  to  him,  is  left  to  follow 
the  plough  if  he  will,  one  is  inclined  to  agree 
with  Tully's  prescription,  unless  it  may  seem 
under  the  imminent  conditions  simpler  and  more 
economical  to  provide  well-fenced  strongholds  for 
one's  self,  and  to  leave  the  crazy  world  to  run 
at  large. 

There  was  a  little  silence,  and  then  Tully's 
justly  balanced  mind  began  to  bring  up  from  the 
stores  of  memory  some  of  the  less  favourable 
aspects  of  the  days  of  old.  "Not  but  what,"  he 
began,  "  I  don't  say  as  there's  not  improvements 
some  ways  since  I  can  remember,  and  since  what 
I've  heard  my  father  tell  of.  I  'spect  it  was  a  bit 
rougher  than  what  we  should  care  for  now.  I 
can  rec'lect  the  girls  doing  the  washing  out  in 
215 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

the  yard  in  the  winter,  with  their  skirts  froze  hard 
about  their  knees,  and  they  wore  short  sleeves 
then,  and  they'd  sometimes  chilblains  right  up  to 
their  elbows  ;  and  get  two  pounds  a  year  for  that. 
And  the  boys  got  knocked  about  a  bit,  too. 
Seemed  they  didn't  think  so  much  about  things 
then.  I  rec'lect  when  there  was  no  ceiling  to  the 
church  roof,  and  the  snow  used  to  come  right 
through  into  the  chancel ;  the  clerk  he  used  to 
sweep  it  off  the  seats  before  service.  There  was 
none  of  these  stoves  then ;  and  Parson  Short,  I've 
seen  him  blowing  his  fingers  while  they  was  sing- 
ing the  Psalms.  It  was  rougher  still  in  my  father's 
time,  I  'spect.  That  was  when  the  war  was  on, 
and  the  French  prisoners  was  kept  at  the  old 
Talbot ;  old  Jack  Lelliot  he'd  often  baked  their 
dinners  for  them,  and  sometimes  they'd  catch  a 
toad  in  the  garden  and  put  it  in  one  of  their  pies. 
The  press-gang  was  going  about  then,  and  you 
durstn't  send  a  waggon  to  Lewes  with  two  men, 
for  fear  they'd  take  one  of  'em  ;  if  there  was  but 
one  with  the  horses,  they  couldn't  take  him,  you 
see.  And  highwaymen :  the  corn-market  at  Tis- 
field  used  to  be  at  six  o'clock  in  the  evening, 
so's  they  could  hear  the  price  of  corn  in  London  ; 
and  sometimes  when  the  farmers  were  going  home, 
they  were  set  on.  My  grandfather  was  once 
driving  his  trap  from  the  market,  betwixt  Harvest 
Hill  and  Pain's  Bottom,  and  he  saw  three  men 
waiting  to  stop  him :  so  he  cut  the  horse,  and 

216 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

sent  one  of  'em  flying,  and  went  through  without 
they  touched  him.  And  there's  another  thing 
that's  improved :  about  the  tithe.  They  used  to 
take  it  in  kind ;  I  used  to  know  the  last  tithing- 
man,  when  I  was  a  boy:  Freeman  Blaker  they 
called  him,  and  he  lived  in  Sher'n'am,  where  the 
post-office  is  built  now.  He'd  come  in  harvest 
time  and  stick  a  bough  in  every  tenth  sheaf,  and 
he'd  have  the  tenth  pig  when  there  was  a  litter, 
and  every  tenth  day  the  whole  of  the  milk.  I 
can  tell  you  my  father  was  pretty  glad  when  the 
Commutation  came  in,  and  it  was  all  done  away 
with.  People  didn't  take  to  the  tithing ;  and  can 
you  blame  them  ?  If  they  was  harvesting  beans, 
or  anything  like  that,  they'd  sometimes  put  the 
tithe  sheaves  in  a  bit  of  a  stack,  like,  in  a  wood, 
and  leave  them  there,  and  the  poor  people'd  go 
and  help  themselves,  and  you  couldn't  blame 
them.  And  when  the  old  tithe-barn  that  used 
to  stand  next  the  church  was  burnt  down,  there 
was  nobody  sorry,  and  some  reckoned  they  knew 
pretty  well  how  it  came  to  catch  fire.  I've  heard 
Parson  Short  say  as  how  those  that  first  gave  the 
tithe  had  brought  the  Church  more  curses  than 
they  ever  did  good.  Well,  there's  things  like  that 
where  there's  great  improvements ;  but  come  to 
look  at  the  boys  and  the  gells — ay,  and  the  men 
and  women  too — what  they  was  then,  and  what 
they  set  out  to  be  now,  and  'tis  an  improvement 
all  the  other  way." 

217 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

At  this  point  we  left  the  State  to  look  after 
itself,  and  turned  to  our  private  concerns — the 
neighbouring  field  of  swedes  starved  for  want  of 
rain,  the  wells  drained  of  their  last  muddy  residue, 
the  disjointed  cycle  of  rain  and  fine.  Before  we 
had  finished,  the  horses  came  in  from  the  fields, 
and  Tully  had  to  go  and  see  to  their  stabling.  I 
turned  for  home,  thinking  as  I  crossed  the  stale 
dry  fields  and  sapless  woods  of  Tully's  balances 
of  better  and  worse,  of  prices  to  pay  for  things 
to  have,  of  labour  and  wages,  of  the  see-saw  of 
reacting  extremes  upon  which  we  live,  making  it 
our  religion  to  drive  each  recoil  more  violent  than 
the  last.  I  entertained  a  vision  of  our  public  men 
doing  their  best  to  bring  that  vicious  libration  to 
a  stand,  instead  of  using  all  their  weight  to  make 
the  machine  kick  the  beam  for  their  party  ends. 
We  shall  have  to  overcome  a  number  of  old  pre- 
scriptions and  prejudices  first,  no  doubt,  breach 
several  bulwarks  and  rape  sundry  Palladiums 
of  progress ;  but  surely  there  are  already  signs 
of  decay  in  some  of  those  hedges  of  divinity, 
and  the  change  may  be  nearer  than  we  con- 
ceive. 

I  had  taken  a  short  cut  through  some  pastures 
which  landed  me  in  face  of  an  old  stake  and  wattle 
fence ;  the  crumbling  bank  and  half-rotten  lattice 
of  stick  and  bramble  made  as  awkward  a  barrier 
as  short  cut  ever  led  to.  I  scrambled  over  at  last, 
somehow;  and  as  I  stopped  to  clear  myself  of 
218 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

thorns  and  litter  from  the  hedge,  I  said  to  myself, 
with  a  parallel  such  as  Mrs.  Ventom  would  not 
have  disdained,  that  it  might  be  ten  times  easier 
to  get  over  a  stiff  new  fence  than  a  rotten  old  one, 
after  all. 


219 


XX 

September  18. 

AN  occasional  invasion  from  the  outer  world  serves 
very  comfortably  to  settle  the  cloistered  mind  in 
its  opinion  of  the  goodness  of  its  solitude.  Thus 
when  lately  on  a  mild  autumnal  afternoon  the 
Sims-Biggs  and  Mrs.  Yarborough-Greenhalgh  and 
her  daughters  chanced  to  jump  with  one  another 
at  teatime  in  one  of  their  half-yearly  calls  at 
Lonewood,  and  found  the  Warden  and  Mary 
Enderby  and  Harry  Mansel,  who  had  come  up 
to  fetch  certain  flower-seedlings  for  The  Laurels, 
my  groves  resounded  for  half  an  hour  to  a  very 
tolerable  imitation  of  the  shouting  cross-fire  which 
in  these  last  times  passes  for  conversation.  The 
reign  of  peace  was  all  the  fuller  when  the  tumult 
came  to  an  end,  and  I  dare  say  one's  wits  were 
all  the  better  for  an  involuntary  souse  in  a  breaker 
of  that  great  tide  on  the  shore  of  which  I  am  wont 
to  bask  and  murmur  my  suave  mari.  The  Warden, 
my  cousin,  and  Harry  stayed  on  after  the  others 
had  gone,  and  we  went  down  the  garden  to  get  the 
columbines  and  pansy  roots,  and  talked  in  our  own 
way.  Mary,  I  thought,  bore  a  little  hardly  on  the 
220 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

young  man,  who  was  to  carry  the  basket  down  to 
the  village  for  her,  with  glance-hits  at  his  extreme 
nicety  of  get-up,  and  his  searching  knowledge  of 
the  proprieties  of  life.  The  youth  took  it  all  excel- 
lently, with  a  show  of  ingenuous  modesty ;  but 
I  doubt  if  my  cousin  perceived  a  tinge  of  humour 
in  his  gravity  which  meant  that  he  quite  under- 
stood, and  though  playing  feather-light,  could 
easily  guard  his  head.  Mary  has  been  pleased 
to  consider  him  as  seriously  wanting  in  brains 
and  a  danger  to  his  country,  ever  since  he  failed 
rather  ostentatiously  to  respond  to  an  attempt  to 
communicate  something  of  her  admiration  for 
Molly  Crofts.  She  has  told  me  that  he  was  made 
in  a  mould ;  that  there  were  some  thousands  of 
boys  exactly  like  him  in  the  British  Army ;  and 
I  told  her  if  that  was  so,  to  thank  Heaven  that  the 
country  was  not  in  such  a  bad  way  as  some  patriots 
were  pleased  to  think. 

The  Warden  turned  back  with  me  when  we  had 
seen  Mary  and  her  squire  out  at  the  field  gate,  and 
we  sat  and  smoked  under  the  holly  hedge  till  the 
light  began  to  fade.  We  ranged  over  a  good  deal 
of  country  before  coming  round  to  the  inevitable 
master-theory.  The  Warden  vented  a  little  fume 
which  he  had  been  obliged  to  keep  to  himself 
when  lately  consulted  by  a  committee  of  our 
intellectual  ladies  on  the  choice  of  books  for  a 
course  of  lectures  and  reading  which  exhilarates 
the  winter  months  in  our  region.  They  had,  of 
221 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

course,  made  up  their  minds  before  they  asked  him, 
he  says,  and  were  going  to  plunge  into  Marcus 
Aurelius  and  Epictetus :  of  course,  they  never 
heard  of  Antoninus,  and  they  call  it  Epictetus ; 
but  that  doesn't  make  any  odds.  There  must 
be  something  in  stodge  like  that  to  attract  the 
average  female  mind.  He  thinks  most  probably 
it's  the  want  of  humour.  The  real  sense  of 
humour  is  the  admission  of  the  incalculable, 
something  elastic  in  the  brain  which  will  stand 
the  shock  when  two  and  two  don't  make  four. 
Of  course,  in  a  purely  scientific  age  like  ours,  we 
can't  expect  any  admission  of  that  sort.  It's  a 
general  plague  :  think  of  a  sensible  woman  like 
Lady  Anne,  or  nice  girls  like  Molly  bothering 
their  heads  about  those  two  old  fifth-raters  or 
their  modern  equivalents,  and  ignoring  all  the 
real  live  stuff.  He  had  talked  to  Molly  about  it  : 
but  it  was  no  good  ;  they'd  got  it  all  down  in  a 
syllabus  now,  with  lectures  by  some  poor  devil 
who  is  trying  to  make  a  living  at  once  out  of  his 
First  in  History.  "Molly  said  it  was  so  stimu- 
lating, and  I  told  her  it  didn't  sound  intoxicating, 
anyhow.  They  had  been  discussing  Marcus's 
views  of  immortality,  and  I  told  her  he  was  one 
of  those  people  who  can  only  think  of  infinity 
in  one  direction,  as  if  it  didn't  go  both  ways, 
behind  as  well  as  in  front ;  and  that  we  forget 
that  God  is  as  much  smaller  than  we  are  as 
He  is  greater.  I  thought  that  would  be  a 

222 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

stimulus,  but  Molly  thought  she  was  shocked. 
We  are  so  serious  now,  that  we  can't  imagine 
where  the  fun  comes  in  to  anything,  even  about 
ourselves.  Our  work  is  so  strenuous  and  earnest 
that  we  are  always  in  the  thick  of  it,  and  can 
never  stand  back  to  get  the  general  perspective. 
Look  at  the  way  Montaigne  always  keeps  the 
scale  of  things,  and  can  laugh  at  himself  and 
everything  else  when  he  likes.  But  then  he'd 
been  in  the  world.  He  must  have  thought,  some- 
times, how  his  dealings  with  the  Ligue,  and  the 
Mairie,  and  affairs  like  the  muster  of  the  troops  in 
Bordeaux,  would  count  towards  getting  a  hearing 
from  the  right  kind  of  people  in  time  to  come. 
We  never  get  a  philosopher  now  among  the  men 
of  action.  What  opportunities  even  a  man  like 
Harry  Mansel  has  with  his  Ghurkas  in  the  Hills, 
and  back  at  home  every  other  year  or  so !  It 
makes  one  sick  of  one's  theories,  nursed  up  on 
stale  ground  for  fifty  years  together.  There's  a 
boy  that  has  lived ;  two  campaigns  for  his  country 
before  he's  twenty-seven,  snubbed  and  starved 
by  the  politicians  till  they  want  him  every  now 
and  then  to  clean  up  the  messes  they  have  made. 
He's  helping  to  shove  the  waggon,  and  we  sit 
inside  and  squabble  about  education  and  efficiency. 
Brains?  Aren't  there  kinds  of  brains,  as  well  as 
sizes  ?  Do  you  think  we  poky  little  people  who 
sit  at  home  annotating  the  classics,  and  wasting 
paper  in  offices,  and  lecturing  to  ladies  on  Epictetus, 
223 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

could  manage  a  hill-tribe  that  was  turning  nasty  ? 
I  don't  say  there  aren't  set-offs  on  the  other  side. 
It's  a  pity  Harry  should  have  dropped  his  classics 
altogether  since  he  left  Sandhurst ;  but  one  can't 
have  everything.  I  suppose  it's  all  our  personal 
freedom  and  high  culture  and  precise  thinking  that 
prevent  us  having  any  Montaignes  now.  But  we 
could  do  with  one  or  two:  the  solemn  strenuous 
people  are  not  much  good  even  at  lectures  ;  but 
when  it  comes  to  the  whole  government  of  a 
country  being  made  of  them,  it  is  really  rather 
awful.  It  isn't  always  easy  to  make  out  the 
compensatory  advantages,  when  you  get  a  fact 
like  that  to  think  about." 

We  were  once  more  in  the  neighbourhood  of  the 
familiar  solution,  and  the  final  stages  of  its  develop- 
ment lasted  until  I  had  seen  the  Warden  out  of  the 
lower  gate,  and  had  lost  him  at  the  turning  of  the 
field-path  into  the  road.  The  theory  ran  still  in 
my  head  for  a  little  as  I  came  back  up  the  garden, 
thinking  of  an  old  contrast  which  balanced  Mon- 
taigne against  Plato  :  the  Greek,  with  a  divine 
stillness  about  him,  knowing  spells  of  strange 
power,  shines  with  an  anointing  that  eludes  human 
holds  ;  Montaigne  is  one  of  ourselves,  goes  down 
into  the  pit  with  us,  puts  on  him  the  dust  of 
mortality  for  the  wrestler's  sand.  .  .  . 

From  a  flight  or  two  such  as  this  I  came  down 
to  the  still  September  evening,  the  just- risen  moon, 
near  the  full,  hanging  above  the  eastern  woods, 
224 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

the  autumn  flowers  in  the  dusking  borders,  and 
the  first  smell  of  autumn  leaves.  My  associative 
recollection  answered  at  once  to  that  mixture  of 
impressions,  and  the  shadowy  rampart  of  the 
Downs  turned  as  I  looked  at  it  to  Allington 
Hills,  the  first  horizon  I  knew  beyond  the  bounds 
of  garden-hedges  or  nursery  window-panes — to 
Allington  Hills  as  I  used  to  see  them  across  my 
first  river  of  Sandwell  stream.  Both  river  and 
hills  were  part  of  a  magic  country,  lying  within 
a  morning's  walk  of  the  common  earth  of  lessons 
and  bedtime  and  rainy  days  indoors.  Sandwell, 
in  his  degree,  and  among  civil  streams,  was  surely 
one  of  the  noblest  that  ever  flowed — crystal  clear, 
neither  fast  nor  slow,  equable  both  in  drought 
and  flood.  Frost  never  bound  him,  for  he  had  in 
him  some  volcanic  temper,  so  that  in  hard  weather 
his  windings  lay  under  a  white  veil  of  smoke  ;  and 
no  fieriest  dog-star  had  power  to  abate  him  an  inch 
of  his  pride.  Not  for  many  a  day  did  I  discover 
that  he  came  to  us  through  no  old  kingdoms  and 
far-off  lands,  not  even  through  long  valleys  of  our  own 
shire,  but  in  his  main  artery  sprang  at  once  to  full 
span  from  the  confluence  of  three  rushing  streams 
welling  up  marvellously  amongst  the  houses  and 
gardens  of  the  village.  The  amplest  of  the  three 
heads  was  housed  in  a  sort  of  temple,  the  eight- 
sided  red-brick  well-house,  always  close-shut  and 
mysterious,  full  of  the  sound  of  invisible  springs. 
Another  source  came  wavering  into  the  light  from 
225  Q 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

under  a  low  dark  archway  in  a  park  wall,  and  ran 
over  yellow  gravel  alongside  the  highroad  ;  the 
third  I  never  traced  to  its  spring,  somewhere 
among  the  cottage  gardens  in  Church  Lane.  The 
three  main  heads  joined  to  make  a  broad  shallow 
pool  in  the  middle  of  the  village,  and  at  the  outflow 
Sandwell  began.  Its  silent  stealth  made  it  seem 
unfathomable  to  my  early  fancy ;  I  must  have 
been  twelve  years  old  before  its  olive-green  deeps 
resolved  themselves  into  a  good  mid-thigh  in  full 
channel.  In  holiday  time  I  used  to  fish  the  stream 
with  a  good  deal  of  application,  but  with  an  incur- 
able and  perfectly  conscious  unhandiness,  and  a 
consistent  ill-luck  which  may  have  had  a  share  in  the 
making  of  a  certain  habit  of  acquiescence  in  failure, 
hardly  proper  for  that  age,  but  immoveable.  There 
was  a  stretch  called  Dodgson's  Piece,  along  one 
side  of  Mill  Green  Lane,  which  was  free-warren 
and  haunted  in  summer  holidays  by  all  the  boys 
who  could  contrive  a  hazel-rod  and  crooked  pin. 
There  the  trout  were  scarcely  larger  than  minnows, 
and  of  a  marvellous  activity ;  but  look  over  the 
upper  Town  Bridge  or  the  lower  Meadow  Bridge, 
which  marked  the  limits  of  the  public  water,  and 
there  in  the  cool  privacy  of  lawns  and  gardens, 
under  the  very  shadow  of  the  arch,  you  saw  the 
waving  tails  of  the  three-pounders  who  knew  their 
station  to  an  inch,  and  never  showed  a  nose  on 
the  plebeian  side.  For  a  year  or  two  I  flogged 
the  edges  of  the  weed-beds  with  every  sort  of 
226 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

home-made  tackle,  and  after  a  certain  birthday 
with  a  fine  fly-rod  out  of  the  little  barber's  shop  on 
the  Mill  Green  ;  but  I  had  learned  my  capacity, 
and  presently  turned  to  less  exacting  arts.  The 
hills  were  my  second  pleasure ;  in  the  less  active 
humours  even  dearer  than  Sandwell  itself.  Long 
before  I  had  ever  got  any  nearer  to  them  than  the 
river  bank,  they  seemed  to  call  me,  stirring  vague 
longings  as  the  frontier  of  another  world,  a  magic 
land  where  I  fain  would  be.  When  at  length  I 
came  to  climb  the  heathy  swell  and  stand  upon 
the  ridge,  there  away  in  the  south,  beyond  the 
long  fir-woods  that  sank  below  me,  over  the  broad 
plain  that  stretched  beyond,  no  nearer  than  they 
had  been  before,  rose  again  the  blue  hills  far  away. 
Between  the  river  and  the  hills  lay  the  little  town 
that  still  called  itself  "The  Village,"  roofs  half 
hidden  among  orchard  boughs,  old  park  elms,  a 
grove  of  broad  cedars.  Beyond  the  houses  came 
the  open  country,  level  hedgeless  fields,  softly  blue 
at  the  season  with  acres  of  flowering  lavender.  All 
this  realm  lay  towards  the  sun,  away  from  the 
region  of  ever  thickening  roads  and  houses,  and 
was  on  the  edge  of  the  real  country ;  it  was  kept 
for  Saturday  walks  and  day-long  rambles  in  the 
boundless  ease  and  peace  of  mind  of  the  first  weeks 
of  summer  holidays ;  journeys  that  were  always 
made,  as  it  seems  now,  together  with  Barbara  des 
Vceux.  Those  were  the  days  when  the  chance  of 
next-door  houses  made  us  fellow-prisoners  at  sums 
227 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

and  French,  and  constant  mates  at  playtime  in  the 
back  gardens  or  on  Allington  .Hills.     Over  Sand- 
well  by  the  Meadow  Bridge  a  lane  led,  turning 
presently  into  a  cart-track  through  the  fields  that 
were   always  rich  with  the  smell   of  widths  of 
peppermint  and  always  abloom,  as  they  remain  in 
memory,  with  the  soft  violet  under-heaven  of  the 
lavender  ;  and  next  into  a  high-hedged  blackberry 
lane,  winding  and  rising  steeper  and   sandier  till 
heather  and  fern  took  the  place  of  the  brambles, 
and  all  at  once,  over  a  bank  of  white  pebbly  sand 
topped  with  flaming  gorse,  rose  the  dark  stretches 
of  the  glorious  hill.    Along  the  grassy  clearings  we 
ran  our  courses,  and  sat  to  talk  among  the  sandpits 
and  heathy  brows,  shut  in  from  all  but  the  warm 
blue  and  the  sailing  clouds.     And  so  for  two  years 
the  hills  took  on  them  their  share  of  the  spell, 
born  of  a  passion  restless,  shy,  infinitely  sweet, 
with  which  my  silent  devotion  to  Barbara  filled 
every  place  where  she  and  I  had  been  together ; 
but  their  true  part  in  that  conjunction  I  did  not 
learn  until  Bab  had  said  good-bye  and  gone  away. 
Then,  for  two  years  more,  as  I  looked  day  by  day 
towards  the  old  horizon,  a  gap  in  the  ridge  beyond 
the  poplar  clump  showed  me  the  way  that  she  had 
gone,  the  way  by  which,  I  dreamed  brave  dreams, 
I  should  one  day  go  to  find  her  in  the  new  world. 
It   was  early  autumn  when   she  left  us,  and   in 
misting  twilights  all  the  levels  below  the  hills  were 
full  of  the  smell  of  the  mint-stilling  ;  to  this  day  a 

228 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

thought  of  the  smell  comes  back  with  the  moist 
breathings  of  September  dusk,  and  brings  with  it  a 
motion  of  the  boyish  grief.  Two  years  I  watched 
the  edge  of  my  world,  faithful  utterly  to  Barbara 
in  some  dim  western  shire,  with  such  help  as  was 
to  be  found  in  two  or  three  little  pencil-ruled 
letters  before  the  final  silence.  In  due  time  the 
barbed  shaft  was  drawn  out  of  the  wound,  not 
without  throes.  It  was  a  strange  strife  when  I 
first  felt  past  all  doubt  the  change  working  ;  there 
were  strong  vows  to  bind  the  slipping  faith,  exe- 
crations of  the  baser  self,  sudden  stealings-back  of 
the  old  tenderness,  desperately  sad  and  dear,  before 
that  devotion  wholly  passed.  It  left  its  trace 
behind,  and  even  now,  in  September  evenings  when 
the  level  mists  thicken  along  the  fields  and  the 
smell  of  dead  leaves  hangs  about  the  walks,  I  find 
myself  still  looking  away  to  far-off  hills  and  think- 
ing of  all  that  Barbara  taught  me  first,  by  Allington 
Hills  and  Sandwell  stream. 


229 


XXI 

October  14. 

As  I  crossed  Hangman's  Acre  yesterday  on  my 
way  to  the  Vachery,  I  wondered  if  I  had  ever  seen 
a  fouler  day  and  a  more  desolate  spot  together. 
Hangman's  Acre  is  a  plot  that  may  well  have  a 
curse  on  it — low-lying,  waterlogged  ground  of  so 
villanous  heart  that  not  even  thistles  will  thrive 
there  ;  it  was  once  sown  with  oats  by  a  new  tenant, 
and  the  four-inch  straw  still  litters  the  stitches ; 
the  stunted  oaks,  the  Dead  Man's  tree  amongst 
them,  starve  in  the  thin  clay  ;  the  hedges  are  run 
wild,  and  broken  at  the  fancy  of  any  strays.  There 
are  plenty  of  derelict  fields  in  our  region,  but  none 
to  touch  this  miserable  piece ;  and  I  sometimes 
muse  whether,  in  that  Clearing  House  or  Court  of 
Transcendental  Equity,  which  I  hope  to  see  one 
day  at  work,  I  could  not  claim  damages  for  the 
perpetual  depressing  influence  of  all  these  acres  of 
unutterably  slack  and  slovenly  farming  amongst 
which  I  take  my  walks.  The  wilderness  is  one 
thing,  the  busy  works  of  men  another ;  but  this 
confusion  of  thwarted  Nature  with  human  failure 
is  one  of  those  things  which  shrivel  the  soul.  In 
230 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

the  middle  of  such  thoughts  as  these  there  came  the 
sound  of  a  right-and-left  somewhere  down  in  the 
valley,  answered   instantly  by  the  kok-kok  of  a 
pheasant  close  by  in  the  copse,  and  I  made  a  note 
— for  the  six  hundredth  time — of  the  quarter  to 
which  my  claim  for  transcendental  damages  must 
be  addressed.     If  the  land  were  in  poor  case,  the 
weather  matched  it.      In  a  general  way  I  pour 
healthy  scorn  on  people  who  are  afraid  of  country 
ways  and  country  wet.     The  man  who  shies  at  a 
mile  or  two  of  muddy  lane,  whose  dismayed  mind 
yearns  instinctively  towards  his  wonted  cab-rank 
when  the  pelting  shower  catches  him  in  the  open 
plough,  is  a  mere  "  product  of  civilisation,"  and  is 
all  the  better  for  an  elemental  wash.     We,  who 
have  to  trudge  our  two  or  three  miles  of  streaming 
road  to  get  a  postal  order  or  a  bottle  of  physic,  in 
black  winter  nights  when  we  must  feel  for  the 
hedge-bank  as  we  go,  with  the  north-easter  gnaw- 
ing the  windward  ear  and  pinching  our  finger-tips 
in  his  vice,  we  know  the  inward  heat,  the  long 
thoughts  that  clear  and  shape  themselves  while 
the  body  holds  its  mechanic  pace  along  the  solitary 
way.     We  would  not  change  those  silent  tramps 
in  the  rain  or  the  starry  frosts  for  all  the  flare  and 
sociable  hubbub  of  Oxford   Street  itself.     And 
then,  what  would  April,  what  would  the  sweet  of 
June  be,  if  they  were  not  honestly  bought  and  paid 
for,  earned  and  learned  by  the  full  reckoning  of 
the  winter  wild  ? 

231 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

So  much  for  all  honest  bad  weather ;  but  there 
is  a  sort  that  is  vile  beyond  all  treaty  and  the 
sanctions  of  human  fibre,  and  in  these  latitudes 
largely  due,  as  I  think,  to  modern  and  artificial 
states  of  the  sky.  There  is  often  in  an  unadul- 
terated north  wind  that  which  makes  one  under- 
stand at  once  why  the  Devil  is  said  to  sit  in  lateribus 
aquilonis ;  but  when  a  peculiar  dun  gloom,  an 
olive-hued,  throat-catching  fume,  a  sting  in  the 
rain  perhaps  partly  chemical,  are  added  to  the 
miserable  hour,  the  soul  of  the  toughest  rustic  cries 
out  as  agakist  unfair  play.  There  is  war  without 
truce  between  man  and  Nature — 

"  Pater  ipse  colendi 
Haud  facilem  esse  viam  voluit  ..." 

grant  that  from  the  hardness  of  the  world  use 
extunds  various  arts,  and  that  our  wits  are  profit- 
ably sharpened  by  cares  ;  yet  if  there  be  a  suspicion 
of  .added  handicap,  the  transition  from  braced 
energy  to  listless  depression  is  one  of  the  shortest 
in  life.  All  the  Virgilian  plagues,  the  blights  and 
weeds  and  birds  and  weather,  one  can  face  with  a 
stout  courage ;  but  let  a  man  begin  to  see  behind 
the  primordial  contest  the  new  odds  of  legislative 
interferences,  municipal  smoke-plagues,  economic 
weed-plagues  and  bird-plagues,  and  it  may  go  near 
to  break  his  heart.  Without  this  uncovenanted 
advantage,  storms  and  seasons  buffet  us  in  vain. 
From  the  weather  and  the  scene  at  their  worst  I 

232 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

was  glad  enough  to  get  into  the  lee  of  the  farm 
buildings  at  the  Vachery.  After  the  raw  wind 
and  the  puddled  furrows,  the  smell  of  the  wood 
smoke  blown  gustily  about  the  yard  and  the  dry 
footing  by  the  ricks  lulled  the  temper  with  a 
luxurious  sense  of  refuge.  The  daylight,  a  wan 
gloom  at  the  best,  had  begun  to  thicken  before  I 
reached  the  farm  ;  and  when  I  knocked,  the  house 
door  was  already  barred  for  the  night.  After  due 
parley,  almost  drowned  in  the  uproar  made  by  the 
dogs,  I  was  admitted,  and  found  the  household 
settled  in  for  the  night,  the  men  drawn  round  the 
kitchen  fire  while  supper  was  making  ready  on  the 
long  table  in  the  middle  of  the  room.  It  was  a 
patriarchal  composition.  Jethro  Tully,  the  master, 
sat  in  the  inmost  place  in  the  chimney-corner,  his 
white  beard  and  wrinkled  face  lit  by  the  blazing 
stick  fire ;  next  him  his  two  sons,  strong-faced, 
middle-aged  men,  grave  and  silent ;  beyond  them 
the  carter-boy  and  a  little  sickly  grandson  of 
the  house  whispered  and  laughed  together  on  the 
farthest  bench.  The  elder  son's  wife,  a  spare, 
hard-featured  woman  with  invincible  eyes,  and  her 
niece,  a  slight,  fair-haired  girl,  moved  to  and  fro 
about  the  table  in  the  flickering  light.  The  two 
terriers  and  the  sheep-dog,  their  dutiful  alarum 
discharged,  lay  at  length  before  the  hearth,  serenely 
forgetful  of  rabbit-burrow  or  miry  fold.  The  wind 
rumbled  in  the  chimney,  and  now  and  again  sent 
a  blue  haze  of  wood  smoke  across  the  room,  to 
233 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

mix  with  the  fine  hungry  smell  from  the  great 
black  pot,  whose  lid  chattered  and  steamed  above 
the  crackling  bavin.  The  room,  though  bare  of  all 
but  the  first  necessities,  had  a  look  of  persuasive 
comfort.  The  shining  slabs  of  the  oak  table,  with 
its  darned  but  well  bleached  cloth,  the  heavy 
benches,  the  single  armchair,  the  tall  clock,  the 
gun  slung  over  the  chimney  breast,  the  sheephook 
and  old  green  umbrella  behind  the  door  made  one 
reflect  not  quite  contentedly  on  one's  own  ingenious 
superfluity.  The  brick  floor,  the  capacious  hearth, 
patient  of  muddy  boots  and  paws,  show  one's 
Persian  apparatus  of  carpets  and  hangings  in  a 
new  light.  The  master  of  the  house  in  his  simple 
state  is  the  true  aristocrat,  deriving  his  descent 
straight  from  a  gentry  far  beyond  our  short-legged 
pedigrees ;  and  before  his  patriarchal  throne  by 
the  hearth  I — an  unclassed  Ulysses,  wandering  at 
a  loose  end  for  many  a  year  among  men  and 
matters — behold  in  Mus*  Tully  not  so  much 
Eumaeus  as  Alcinous  himself. 

I  settled  the  small  business  I  had  come  about ; 
and  my  account  for  sundry  tackle  from  the  woods, 
spray  faggots,  ether-boughs  and  thatching-rods 
was  audited  and  receipted  by  the  scholar  of  the 
house,  little  Alf  the  crippled  grandson,  the  only 
one  there,  I  think,  who  would  face  the  business  of 
writing  his  name.  There  was  a  little  time  left 
before  supper  was  ready  to  set  on,  so  I  sat  with 
my  steaming  boots  on  the  hearthstone  and  led  old 
234 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

Tully  on  to  ancient  history.  As  is  generally  the 
case,  he  needed  very  little  leading.  I  sometimes 
compare  his  mind  to  one  of  our  thick-standing 
woods,  which  will  return  an  echo  as  clearly  as  a 
hillside  or  a  house-wall.  My  due  remark  about 
the  roughness  of  the  weather  brought  an  answer 
at  once  from  his  close-set  memories.  There  had 
not  been  such  a  wet  winter  since  'fifty-one ;  but 
that  was  worse,  a  good  bit.  There  was  hardly 
any  corn  sown  right  through  till  the  spring.  He 
was  at  Hoadly  Hill  then,  and  there  they  always 
reckoned  to  get  their  corn  in  by  Old  Michaelmas  ; 
and  they  managed  to,  somehow;  and  after  that, 
when  'twas  so  wet,  they  kept  on  saying  "Where 
should  we  'a  been  ?  .  .  ."  Terrible  wet  it  was,  day 
after  day ;  they  was  wet  through  all  day,  some- 
times, and  no  fire  to  dry  themselves  by ;  took 
their  things  off  wet  at  night,  and  put  'em  on  wet 
again  in  the  morning.  No,  he  doesn't  reckon  it 
hurt  them.  I  look  across  at  the  old  man  in  the 
firelight  and  grant — by  all  our  country  standards 
of  well-favouredness — that  he  does  not  seem  the 
worse  for  all  that  hardness.  Something  of  the 
lean  face,  the  angular  bent  figure  is  perhaps  due 
to  such  experiences ;  something  too,  I  think,  of  a 
look  of  refinement,  a  filing-out  of  grosser  elements 
and  an  expression  almost  spiritual,  far  too  rare 
among  the  present  race. 

Well,  Tully  is   saying,  other  people  of  course 
they  got  their  corn  in  late — all  anyhow,  most  of  it ; 
235 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

and  it  was  rough  right  through  the  summer.  That 
made  the  price  go  up  ;  that  and  the  Crimean  War 
afterwards.  Terrible  poor  stuff,  most  of  the  flour 
was  that  year,  and  wouldn't  bake ;  sometimes  they'd 
have  to  take  it  out  of  the  oven  with  a  spoon,  and 
sometimes  it'd  spew  right  out  of  the  loaf,  like. 
Wheat  was  up  to  twenty-eight  pounds  a  load  in 
the  war;  old  Mus'  Luxford,  up  at  Nymans,  he'd 
kept  his  back  to  make  more,  and  it  come  down  to 
fourteen  pounds  in  one  week.  No,  there  was  no 
bad  times,  not  hereabouts,  as  far  as  he  could  recol- 
lect; things  seemed  to  go  on  pretty  much  the 
same  as  usual.  He  reckoned  the  men  on  the 
farms  weren't  no  worse  off  than  what  they  were 
now.  You  see,  'twas  better  farming  then.  He 
goes  on  to  enlarge,  in  a  way  I  well  know,  on  the 
sins  of  the  modern  farmer :  the  uncleaned  dicks, 
the  wet  hungry  land,  the  weeds.  ...  It  was  better, 
time  back  ;  but  'twas  never  very  grand  round  about 
here.  No  good  land  to  be  seen,  they  used  to  say, 
from  Grinstead  steeple. 

I  told  him  I  had  been  at  Southover  not  long 
before,  and  had  seen  the  bullock-team  going  to 
work,  one  of  the  few  remaining  in  Sussex.  He 
remembered  when  they'd  bullocks  all  about  here 
— at  Burstye  and  Nymans  and  High  House ;  some 
were  Sussex  and  some  black  Welsh.  The  bullocks 
at  Hoadly  Hill  wasn't  shoed  ;  they  was  never  on 
the  roads.  He'd  seen  them  shoe  the  Welsh  at 
Grinstead  Fair ;  held  'em  down  with  a  prong  over 
236 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

their  necks — a  funny  job  that  was,  too.  They'd 
two  bulls  at  High  House  then  :  tremendous  strong, 
they  was ;  if  a  waggon  stuck  anywhere,  and  four 
horses  couldn't  shift  it,  they'd  put  they  bulls  in, 
and  they'd  fetch  it  out  as  easy!  Why  was  they 
given  up?  Well,  some  people  said  it  was  the 
cattle-plague ;  but  there  ! — they'd  sim'd  to  make 
up  their  minds  to  have  done  with  'em,  'fore  that 
come,  though  they  couldn't  rightly  say  why.  The 
bullocks  was  better'n  horses,  some  ways ;  they 
didn't  snatch  at  their  work,  and  they  didn't  make 
such  a  mess  of  the  ground  with  their  hoofs  when 
'twas  wet  and  bungey.  Why  didn't  he  have  a 
team  himself  now,  ay  ?  He  only  shakes  his  head 
at  the  question  :  there  are  difficulties,  of  course ; 
the  stoutest  of  us  owes  a  sort  of  allegiance — at 
some  certain  interval — to  the  spirit  of  the  age. 

One  of  the  best  qualities,  as  I  think,  in  Tully's 
histories  is  the  way  in  which  they  grow  out  of 
each  other ;  a  single  name  or  a  date  sets  him  off 
on  a  fresh  line  of  reminiscence ;  but  this  tangential 
habit  needs  at  times  to  be  held  in  check,  or  the 
listener  might  never  reach  the  end  of  any  given 
legend  ;  and  it  is  sometimes  well  to  be  provided 
with  a  decent  pretext  for  breaking  off  the  intermin- 
able series.  It  is  enough  that  the  year  of  the 
disappearance  of  the  last  yoke  of  bullocks  from 
Hoadly  Hill  happened  to  be  the  first  of  the 
ministrations  of  Parson  Short  in  Sheringham 
parish ;  we  are  at  once  in  the  middle  of  an  account 
237 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

of  the  state  of  things  which  that  notable  reformer 
found  awaiting  him  in  the  early  'forties.  I  hear  of 
the  manor  pound,  and  the  stocks,  and  of  one 
Andrews  a  sweep,  who  was  the  last  man  to  be 
put  in  them  ;  of  the  Petty  Constables,  chosen  for  a 
year,  of  their  insignia  of  staff  and  handcuffs  ;  of 
old  Finch  the  shoemaker,  who  held  office  when 
the  village  was  full  of  navvies  working  on  the  new 
railway ;  how  there  were  fights  behind  the  church 
on  Sunday  mornings  ;  "and  we  boys,  we'd  slip  out 
as  soon  as  we  heard  'em  at  it ;  and  old  Finch  he'd 
come  to  them  when  they  was  sitting  on  their 
seconds'  knee — an  old  man,  he  was,  and  he  knew 
if  he  was  rough  on  'em  he'd  like  as  not  get  a  black 
eye  himself — and  he  used  to  wear  big  round  glasses, 
and  he  shoves  them  up  on  his  forehead,  and  he  says, 
'  Well,  my  men,  when  you've  had  enough,'  he  says, 
1  we'd  be  very  glad  for  you  to  leave  off ; '  and  some- 
times they'd  stop,  and  sometimes  they  wouldn't. 
The  navvies  they  was  always  fighting ;  and  that 
set  others  on  fighting  too,  and  a  deal  of  wickedness. 
Well,  when  Mr.  Short  come,  he  soon  stopped  all 
that  on  Sundays.  You  see,  old  Mr.  Budd  as  was 
before  him,  he'd  let  things  go  pretty  much  as  they 
liked,  and  he  was  often  away  in  London  or  Brigh- 
ton, and  nobody  to  take  the  services.  I've  known 
a  body  lie  a  day-two  in  the  church,  'cause  there 
was  no  one  to  bury  it.  Well,  Mr.  Short,  he 
reckoned  to  make  alterations  ;  and  he  had  the 
church  cleaned  right  out,  the  dirt  and  the  bats  and 
238 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

the  owls  and  all ;  then  he  started  the  schoolin' ; 
got  a  master  and  mistress  to  teach  us ;  up  in  the 
long  room  at  the  Dolphin,  that  was.  The  only 
school  I  rec'lect  before  that  was  up  in  the  strong- 
room over  the  church  porch,  and  that  wouldn't 
hold  more'n  a  dozen  or  so.  And,  you  see,  it 
wasn't  as  if  he  was  getting  money  out  of  the 
living ;  not  above  twenty  pounds  he  didn't ;  the 
great  tithes  all  belonged  to  old  Mr.  Tree  ;  they'd 
been  in  his  fam'ly  ever  so  long,  and  he  was  in  the 
Queen's  Bench,  and  he  used  to  come  down  to  the 
place  sometimes  in  the  summer,  and  lived  in  the 
old  parsonage,  what  they  calls  Sheringham  Court 
now ;  two  or  three  weeks  he'd  be  there,  and  always 
an  officer  with  him,  and  then  he'd  go  back  to  the 
Bench  again.  Wonderful  what  Mr.  Short  done 
for  the  village,  while  he  was  here  ;  and  if  it  hadn't 
been  that  there  was  one  or  two  against  him,  that 
had  no  call  to  be,  he'd  have  made  it  a  different 
place  altogether.  Who  was  that?  Why,  the 
people  that  was  at  the  Park  then— always  a  bad 
fam'ly  they  was.  They  was  agin'  him  from  the 
first.  And  Parson  Short  he  spoke  to  'em  straight 
about  it  all ;  and  so  they  was  agin*  him  all  along  ; 
and  it  seemed  as  how  they  was  too  strong  for  him, 
and  at  last  he  had  to  go.  It  was  but  a  little  while 
after  he  was  gone  that  the  old  gentleman  died  in 
his  chair  at  dinner.  I  rec'lect  the  funeral ;  I  never 
see  the  church  so  full,  but  not  an  eye  that  wasn't 
dry  in  it.  I  went  down  into  the  vault  while  it  was 
239 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

open ;  there  was  four  or  five  coffins  there,  with 
coats  of  arms  on  'em.  There  was  none  on  his ; 
more  like  a  parish  funeral,  it  was.  When  the  Park 
was  sold,  all  the  place  went  and  had  a  look  at  it : 
you  see,  they'd  been  regular  afraid  of  the  house 
while  the  old  man  was  there — *  Little  Hell '  they 
called  it ;  and  the  people  went  looking  into  all  the 
rooms,  some  of 'em  half  frightened,  and  some  making 
fun  of  it,  and  saying  they  saw  a  black  man  behind 
the  door,  and  such-like.  Seemed  as  if  everybody 
was  glad  to  think  that  party  was  gone  for  good 
and  all  at  last." 

The  pot-lid  had  been  clacking  to  an  unmistake- 
able  tune  for  some  time,  and  the  comings  and 
goings  of  Mrs.  William  betrayed  anxiety  about 
the  dishing-up :  so  when  there  was  a  great  boil 
over,  and  rushings  and  outcry  of  the  women,  I 
seized  the  chance  of  the  interruption  to  old  Tully's 
chronicle,  and  took  my  leave.  The  night  looked 
black  and  struck  rawly  after  the  glow  of  the 
kitchen ;  and  it  was  a  dreary  three  miles  home, 
with  a  restless  wind  roaming  the  desolate  fields 
like  a  presence,  sounding  far  or  near  in  a  planta- 
tion or  high-timbered  hedge,  going  by  in  a  chilly 
gust  and  leaving  a  dead  pause.  There  was  a 
narrow  rift  of  greenish  sky  in  the  west,  and  now 
and  then  Venus  glittered  out  through  the  folds  of 
cloud,  to  shine  in  the  pools  of  the  drenched  cart- 
track,  and  more  than  once  so  to  save  me  a  deeper 
plunge.  I  thought,  as  I  went,  of  Tully's  histories, 
240 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

and  tried  to  shape  out  something  of  the  life  of  the 
parish  sixty  years  ago,  a  scene  of  ruder  energies 
and,  I  think,  larger  liberties  than  ours,  a  rougher, 
heartier  plan  of  living,  a  stronger-lined  picturesque 
of  character,  a  much  greater  width  of  extremes. 
No  sign  here,  at  least,  of  the  hard  times,  the 
tyranny  and  subservience  which  make  such  a 
figure  in  Cobbett's  "  Rural  Rides,"  and  as  certainly 
nothing  of  the  buttercup-and-daisy  idylls  of  Miss 
Mitford's  "  Village."  I  believe,  for  my  part,  that 
Tully  and  his  kind — for  he  is  only  a  fine  example 
of  a  considerable  school — are  in  the  true  mean 
between  the  pitchy  chiaroscuro  of  the  one  style 
and  the  coloured-crayon  touches  of  the  other, 
painters  of  "  the  real  Picture  of  the  Poor,"  of  the 
truth  of  country  life  as  our  grandfathers  knew  it. 
Ruminating  such  comparisons  as  these,  I  found 
myself  at  the  field  gate  sooner  than  I  had  ex- 
pected ;  and  when  I  came  into  the  still  warmth 
of  the  study,  lit  by  the  hollow-fallen  fire,  my  eye 
fell  on  a  certain  eight  volumes  on  a  middle  shelf, 
and  I  told  myself  once  more  that  Crabbe  was  the 
man ;  that,  after  all,  there  was  never  any  one  in 
the  world  yet  like  him  for  the  presentment — per- 
fectly, or  dreadfully  balanced,  as  you  will — of  the 
rustic  soul. 


241  R 


XXII 

December  12. 

COMING  home  from  the  village  on  black  winter 
nights  I  can  so  far  sympathise  with  the  ordinary 
townsman's  dread  of  country  solitude  as  to  con- 
ceive of  possible  grounds  for  his  delusion.  When 
one  turns  out  of  the  snug  room  at  the  Lodge  or 
The  Laurels,  passes  the  shop-windows  shining  on 
the  drenched  pavements  and  takes  the  muddy  road 
for  home,  one  has  an  inkling  of  the  sensations  of 
those  larger  children  who  dread  loneliness  and  the 
dark.  At  the  turning  where  the  companionable 
noises  of  the  village  are  left  behind,  and  where  on 
moonless  nights  the  light  of  the  outmost  oil-lamp 
fades  on  the  shadowy  hedges,  I  can  imagine  the 
dismay  of  certain  people  who  are  not;  good  com- 
pany for  themselves,  if  they  had  to  walk  into  that 
wall  of  impenetrable  darkness,  and  fare  forth 
solitary  towards  the  silent  house  waiting  them  at 
the  end  of  two  miles  of  uphill  and  wicked  way. 
I  can  conceive  of  the  fact ;  but  the  wonder  of  it 
grows  on  me  every  time  I  make  the  journey.  The 
mere  fitting  of  one's  self  into  one's  own  angle ;  the 
taking  possession  of  one's  undivided  monarchy ; 
242 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

the  yawning  welcome  of  Nym  who  knew  his 
master's  step  at  the  gate  far  too  well  to  bark ;  the 
clink  of  Lucy's  oven-door  or  hiss  of  pan ;  what 
load  of  naughty  pride  or  frost  of  custom  can  make 
a  man  slight  the  greeting  of  such  things  as  these  ? 
Who  rather  would  not  find  that  the  difficulty  lay 
in  being — 

"Not  too  elate 
With  self-sufficing  solitude"? 

I  read  lately  amongst  those  strange  documents 
of  the  human  mind  the  correspondence  columns  of 
certain  Church  newspapers,  the  plaint  of  a  man 
who  professed  a  nightly  horror  at  the  thought  that 
when  he  had  shut  the  door  of  his  country  parson- 
age at  8  p.m.,  no  one  would  knock  at  it  till  the 
postman  came  next  morning.  To  my  cast  of 
vision  that  seems  absolutely  the  position  of  a  lost 
soul.  Heaven  help  him!  Was  there  nothing 
available  to  replace  the  birdseye  and  the  clerical 
shop  of  his  colleague  on  his  way  home  from  the 
Institute,  the  politics  and  sociology  of  his  cheese- 
monger churchwarden?  Was  he  afraid  of  his 
dreams?  Did  he  know  nothing  of  burrowing 
back  shut-eyed  into  one's  memory  and  living  with 
mighty  pleasant  company,  minds  and  faces  worth 
ten  thousand  of  the  tangible  people  he  wants  to 
sit  with  him  to  scare  away  the  bogey  of  vacancy  ? 
Didn't  he — putting  on  one  side  the  translations 
of  the  Fathers,  and  the  Pastor  in  Parochia,  the 
243 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

Preacher's  Promptuary,  the  Liddon  or  Farrar  of 
his  allegiance,  and  of  course  the  correspondence 
columns  of  his  Church  newspaper — didn't  he  read? 
Or  did  he  belong  to  a  library,  and  consume  his 
novel-of-the-week,  his  light  and  heavy  magazines, 
his  epoch-making  science,  all  to  fend  off  the  horror 
of  having  nothing  to  do  but  think,  stuffing  the 
aching  void  with  the  first  mast  or  stubble  that 
came  to  his  hand,  using  all  that  printed  paper  as 
so  much  tobacco-leaf,  burnt  to  steady  the  nerves, 
to  woo  sleep  ?  Anyway,  he  never  knew  the 
meaning  of  a  book.  They  are  not  books,  in  the 
finer  sense,  which  come  into  the  house  in  parcels, 
chaotically  incompatible,  and  after  a  week  or  two 
depart  without  regret,  a  little  looser  in  the  binding, 
a  little  more  thumb-smudged  ;  their  matter  sucked 
dry  and  thrown  away,  the  orange-peel  of  literature. 
Books  are  property,  in  the  accurate  sense  of  the 
word,  personal  belongings  with  their  own  standing 
and  habitation  on  familiar  shelves,  to  be  found 
without  fumbling  in  the  dark ;  they  have  outward 
characters  of  their  own  as  well  as  inward,  idiosyn- 
crasies of  form  and  bindings ;  they  have  been  in 
your  service,  the  greater  part  of  them,  thirty  years, 
let  us  say,  and  they  will  stay  on  your  shelves  as 
long  as  you  can  need  them,  and  a  little  longer. 
In  their  matter,  they  reflect  your  taste  and  lean- 
ings by  their  range  and  their  limits ;  they  are  all 
sealed  to  you  by  ycur  bold  or  whimsical  autograph, 
by  the  pencil  ticks  which  mark  a  beauty  in  your 

244 


LONEWOOD    CORNER 

particular  genre,  a  handsome  seconding  of  some 
favourite  heresy  of  your  own,  by  the  annotations 
and  parallel  places  which  link  them  to  their  fellows 
above  and  below.  These  I  call  books,  the  tried 
friends  whose  leather  coats  begin  to  show  a  sympa- 
thetic crack  or  two  as  your  own  case  wears  a  little 
the  worse  for  the  turning  over  of  the  world,  whose 
matter  has  gone  to  make  part  of  your  inward  con- 
texture ever  since  you  began  to  go  to  school. 

Of  this  sort  are  the  rows  of  brown  backs,  with 
here  and  there  a  chance  vanity  of  second-hand 
vellum  or  new  livery  of  buckram,  neat  but  not  gaudy, 
whose  gilding  catches  a  glint  from  the  low  fallen 
fire  when  I  come  into  the  warm  lull  of  my  burrow 
from  frozen  journeys ;  such  the  good  company 
which  puts  out  of  mind  the  binding  frost  upon 
the  garden  or  the  winter  storm  sweeping  across 
the  lonely  fields,  and  has  power  to  fill  most  of  the 
corners  of  the  empty  house.  I  keep  no  unmanage- 
able rout,  needing  step-ladders  or  catalogues.  My 
odd  hundreds  have  multiplied  by  the  relaxed 
standards  of  age  beyond  the  rigid  limit  of  an 
earlier  choice  ;  but  perhaps  for  some  little  time 
past  have  approached  their  full  number.  I  have 
nearly  all  the  old  books  ;  and  the  new  ones  grow 
ever  less  indispensable,  more  and  more  obnoxious 
to  the  wise  man's  objection,  "ils  nous  empechent 
de  lire  les  anciens."  And  by  the  old  books  I 
mean  the  real  ancients,  the  first  fathers  of  the  rest, 
the  backs  in  Leyden  calf  or  Venetian  vellum, 
245 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

which  seem  to  inspire  in  most  visitors  to  my 
shelves  either  a  puzzled  shyness  or  an  almost 
personal  animosity.  I  sometimes  make  a  guess, 
while  I  warp  one  of  the  brown  folios  over  the  log- 
fire  on  a  winter  night,  how  many  others  in  this 
most  leisured  county  may  be  busy  with  an  author 
of  that  standing :  fifty,  I  make  it,  when  I  am  in 
a  sociable  mood ;  when  the  pride  of  singularity 
swells,  I  doubt  of  five.  In  either  frame  of  mind,  I 
am  happy  in  thinking  how  absolutely  right  is  the 
choice  of  the  real  classics.  It  is,  after  all,  well  to 
begin  at  the  beginning  and  know  something  of  the 
hard-wrought  alphabet  which  all  our  later  exercises 
lazily  shift  and  combine,  perhaps  with  a  consistently 
decreasing  power  of  seeing  the  symbols  in  their 
true  scope  and  force.  And  then,  what  a  security 
and  an  economy  of  energy  in  using  the  result  of 
Time's  sieve  !  There  are  few  things  in  life  which 
so  affect  me  with  a  comfortable  wonder  as  the 
absolute  fixity,  beyond  any  sort  of  appeal,  of  the 
court  of  ultimate  judgment  in  literature  ;  the  con- 
version of  the  weathercock  opinion  of  contemporary 
criticism,  right  by  chance  and  wrong  by  instinct, 
into  the  immovable  security  of  the  full  orb  of  time, 
is  a  cheerful  miracle  which  might  keep  even  a 
weekly  reviewer  from  despair.  To  my  mind,  there 
is  a  natural  barrier  between  us  and  the  books  of 
our  own  age  ;  coeval  literature  is  flesh  of  our  flesh, 
and  it  needs  a  generation  or  two  to  intervene  and 
attenuate  the  affinity  in  order  to  sanction  the 
246 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

commerce.  There  are,  of  course,  very  obvious 
rejoinders  to  be  made  to  this  position,  rejoinders 
invincible  for  those  who  translate  the  world  into 
their  unhesitating  terms  of  white  and  black,  and 
solicitous  enough  for  those  who  seek  the  necessary 
half-tone  among  the  infinite  greys.  By  this  re- 
striction a  man  lessens  his  chance  of  that  purest 
glory,  the  hailing  of  a  rising  genius  under  the 
neglect  or  the  hooting  of  the  crowd  ;  of  finding 
the  enthusiastic  shilling  which  he  gave  for  a  paper- 
covered  set  of  undergraduate  verses  growing,  after 
twenty  years'  burial,  into  profuse  guineas  in  a  dis- 
cerning world ;  and  he  is,  of  course,  open  to  the 
charge  of  bondage  to  dead  minds  and  the  unfruit- 
ful past.  People  like  Mrs.  Sims-Bigg,  for  instance, 
prefer  to  choose  for  themselves  :  Mudie's  list  and 
a  pencil  and  their  own  will  free  as  air,  unfettered 
by  musty  rules  of  dead  old  Greeks  and  Romans  or 
anybody  else,  thank  you  !  Yet,  my  dear  Madam, 
are  you,  after  all,  wholly  unchained  ?  I  seem  to 
recognise  an  almost  nervous  watching  of  the 
literary  modes,  somewhat  after  the  pattern  of  the 
lynx-eyed  solicitude  to  which  you  chiefly  owe 
your  fame  in  your  hats  ;  you  want  to  know  what 
other  people  are  reading;  you  make  a  note  of 
what  the  Duchess  told  the  Under-Secretary  to  be 
sure  to  get ;  you  prick  your  ears  at  the  pealing 
brass  of  the  literary  advertisements.  If  neither  of 
us  is  to  be  trusted  to  forage  at  first  hand  for  him- 
self, I  would  much  rather,  at  my  ease  in  a  cool 
247 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

cave,  sip   a  vintage  sealed   down   two  thousand 
years  ago  than  try  ardent  spirits  six  months  in 
bottle;  I  will  carve  for  myself  from  my  ice-pre- 
served mammoth  rather  than  take  a  tepid  modicum 
of  meat  chewed   for  me  Eskimo-fashion  by  my 
neighbours  at  the  feast.     Each  must  answer  for 
himself:  to  me  the  safer  part  seems  to  be  not  to 
try  to  help  Time  with  the  momentary  sling  of  his 
winnowing-shovel,  but  to  be  content  to  grub  in  the 
heap  of  corn  that  lies  at  his  feet,  secure  from  all 
the   winds   of  heaven.     Therefore   my  book-case 
contains  as  a  basis,  in  all  sorts  of  editions,  from 
the  safe   comment   of  Gronovius  to   the    jaunty 
graces  of    Gildersleeve,  the   Greeks  and   Latins 
pretty  complete.    I  read  through  them  at  a  steady 
plod,  and  when  I  reach  the  gate  of  horn  in  my 
several  journeys,  I  presently  turn  about  and  begin 
again  :  and  on  the  whole  I  get  more  pleasure  from 
the  dead  languages — spite  of  the  drag  of  an  in- 
veterate   hobble    in    construing — than   from   any 
other  sort  of  reading.     This  judgment,  though  it 
amuses  some  of  my  acquaintance  and  seems  to 
irritate  others  in  a  surprising  manner,  is  deliberate 
and  mature.     There  are  those  who  are  instinctive 
classics  at  seven,  and  remain  prize  schoolboys  at 
seventy ;  it  is  another  matter  to  scrape  through  a 
casual  Pass  under  protest,  and  after  certain  experi- 
mental excursions  to  settle  down,  unbothered  by 
accents  and  led  by  no  specious  lure  of  philology  to 
make  the  classics  the  main  indoor  business  of  one's 
248 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

days.  That  the  Greeks  and  Latins  wrote  amaz- 
ingly better  than  many  modern  novelists,  and  are 
a  great  deal  more  amusing  than  most  plays  ;  that 
there  may  be  more  downright  human  interest  and 
colour  in  a  historian  two  thousand  years  dead  than 
in  yesterday's  "word-painting"  by  special  corre- 
spondents, and  more  practicable  politics  in  Plato 
than  in  last  night's  debate:  these  claims  one 
deprecatingly  advances  from  time  to  time  to  one's 
more  indulgent  friends,  and  retires  before  their 
smiles  to  the  safe  covert  of  singularity  whereto  no 
one  offers  to  follow. 

Beginning  at  this  foundation  I  build  forward  the 
courses  of  my  shelves  pretty  closely  with  the  classics 
in  the  larger  significance  of  the  word  ;  in  the  lower 
tiers  there  are  not  many  gaps  ;  but  the  nearer  the 
orders  approach  to  the  profusion  of  our  own  time, 
the  oftener  comes  the  unexpected  hiatus  and  the 
more  freely  I  take  leave  to  dispense  immortality 
on  my  own  terms.  At  the  near  edge  of  the  past, 
where  the  great  judgment  is — spite  of  a  deal  of 
current  assertion  —  not  yet  finally  confirmed,  I 
indulge  some  very  decided  aversions.  There  is 
less  presumption  in  the  position  than  might  be 
imagined :  there  can  always  be  found  some  weighty 
champion  of  one's  dearest  heresy,  and  one's  offence 
need  rarely  be  anything  more  than  the  ranging  of 
one's  self  under  one  or  other  of  two  standards.  If 
I  fail  to  prize  a  robustious  poet  whose  rhymes 
appear  to  me  to  fulfil  the  office  of  the  pinches  of 
249 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

gunpowder  at  the  elbows  of  a  cracker,  and  whose 
general  philosophy  impresses  me  as  a  sort  of  view- 
halloo  of  the  Unseen,  I  join  myself  to  another 
bard  who  seems  at  least  to  own  the  Virgilian  trick 
of  making  his  lines  sing.  The  boundless  capacity 
of  taste  possessed  by  some  people  is  a  thing  I 
always  admire ;  there  is  not  a  product  of  the  age 
like  our  strenuous  Mr.  Dempster  but  can  swallow 
absolute  incompatibles  together ;  whether  he  pos- 
sesses a  palate,  I  cannot  say ;  but  his  impartial 
maw  concocts  at  once — thanks  chiefly,  I  think,  to 
"  University  Extension  " — Mill  and  Ruskin,  Shelley 
and  Herbert  Spencer,  Thackeray  and  "  the  greatest 
living  master  of  romance,"  without  an  apparent 
qualm. 

Catholic  tastes  like  Dempster's  would  find  the 
gaps  among  my  moderns  too  large  to  be  forgiven. 
I  take  my  stand  on  a  principle  something  like 
Montaigne's  "1'idde  de  ces  riches  ames  du  temps 
passd  me  degouste  de  1'autruy  et  de  moy-mesme." 
I  am  definitely  for  the  ancients ;  I  am  too  lazy  to 
do  my  own  sifting;  I  will  have  my  Bavius,  my 
Trissotin,  my  Blackmore  and  Tickell  already  ruled 
out  for  me  by  the  unerring  pen ;  I  will  not  be 
troubled  to  identify  their  inevitable  antitypes 
among  the  swarming  immortals  of  our  own  hour. 
After  all,  though  the  gaps  be  wide,  I  have  been 
forced  to  admit  not  a  few  of  the  veriest  moderns. 
I  like  to  think  that  I  see  in  them  authentic  touches 
of  the  true  descent ;  yet  I  would  not  insist  upon 
250 

/     &r+^*t** 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

their  immortality  on  the  strength  of  a  predilection 
of  my  own  ;  I  would  rather  allow  the  chance  of 
my  forecasts  being  wrong,  as  a  set-off  to  my 
impregnable  judgment  of  the  past. 

The  winnowing  of  Time,  though  it  irrefragably 
keeps  the  true  corn  and  sends  the  chaff  down  the 
wind  to  oblivion,  yet  sorts  the  grain  into  several 
parcels ;  and  among  the  secondary  men  there 
are  some  who  seem  to  be  in  a  manner  cheated 
with  a  somewhat  unsubstantial  honour,  the  mere 
fame  of  fame.  The  difficulty  of  being  generous 
to  the  absolutely  great  and  at  the  same  time 
just  to  the  second  order  is  enormous,  perhaps 
insuperable,  and  founded  on  dimensions  beyond 
our  scope.  For  instance,  it  does  not  do  to  think 
of  Virgil  and  Lucan  together.  Lean  a  little  to- 
wards the  lesser  man,  and  it  is  quite  possible  to 
find  his  force  make  the  ^Eneid  seem  more  than 
a  little  shadowy  and  diffuse.  Grant  to  the  full 
Joubert's  objection  that  force  is  not  energy ;  that 
there  are  authors  who  have  "  plus  de  muscles  que 
de  talent ;  "  that  force  is  a  quality  "  qui  n'est  louable 
que  lorsqu'elle  est  ou  cache'e  ou  vetue.  Dans  le 
sens  vulgaire  Lucain  en  cut  plus  que  Platon ; " 
yet  something  sticks  in  the  mind  and  avenges  the 
lower  genius — the  recollection,  perhaps  of  moods 
when  with  Montaigne  we  preferred  Lucan's  "subti- 
lite  aigue  et  releve"e  "  to  Virgil's  "  force  meure  et 
constante."  In  our  justice  we  are  necessarily 
ungenerous.  Even  without  bearing  in  mind  that 
251 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

Lucan  died  at  twenty-six,  a  balanced  critic  will 
judge  that  here  the  sum  of  praise  is  not  a  thing 
that  can  be  divided  ;  the  greater  poet  must  have 
it  all  or  none ;  we  have,  so  to  say,  to  give  the 
lesser  his  meed  while  the  other  looks  away.  The 
difficulty  will  afford  a  nice  exercise  for  critics  who 
are  untroubled  by  doubts  as  to  the  relation  of  the 
part  to  the  whole. 

The  lower  room  among  the  immortals  has  its 
own  compensations — a  proportionate  safety  from 
the  dull  ass's  hoof,  from  the  annotating  critic,  from 
"  University  Extension,"  and  such  summer  fly- 
blows. I  sometimes  imagine  a  calm  corner  of 
the  Elysian  fields  where  walk  the  subordinate 
immortals,  masters  in  their  own  realm.  There, 
I  fancy,  are  to  be  found  Xenophon,  Lucan, 
Lucian,  Catullus,  Seneca,  Butler,  Berkeley,  La 
Bruyere,  Donne,  Gray,  Crabbe,  Hood — a  mixed 
multitude,  an  election  to  outrage  the  seemly 
sober  critic,  only  defensible  by  the  plea  of  a  per- 
sonal warp  of  humour.  To  this  warp  I  would 
allow  a  much  larger  room  in  the  choice  of  books 
than  it  usually  receives.  General  taste  in  read- 
ing is  a  phantasmal  thing ;  to  have  any  profit 
there  must  be  the  personal  liking  or  disliking, 
a  nexus  where  the  author  may  catch  hold  ; 
"aliquid  inter  te  intersit  et  librum."  The  im- 
personal relation  in  which  many  people  stand 
towards  their  books  seems  to  me  to  imply  a  tragic 
waste  of  human  effort.  Unless  a  man  has  his 

252 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

personal  friends  and  his  enemies  among  his 
authors,  instinctively  chosen  by  likeness  or  differ- 
ence of  humour,  by  contrary  virtue  or  friendly 
vice,  by  south  sides  or  shady  corners,  by  idio- 
syncrasy of  sweet  or  sour,  all  his  application  is  a 
dreary  futility,  mere  waste  of  spelling-books  at 
school.  Naturally  this  intimacy  is  more  easily 
admitted  by  the  secondary  men :  and  perhaps 
we  are,  after  all,  apt  to  be  rather  too  easily 
familiar  with  the  thrones  and  dominions ;  it  may 
be  better  on  the  whole  for  a  tenth-rate  mind  to 
accost  Shakespeare  with  less  cheerful  assurance 
and  to  find  his  account  with,  let  us  say,  Sterne  or 
Sheridan.  The  heroes  of  the  Elysian  suburb  all 
offer,  to  my  thinking,  some  peculiar  handle  of 
approach  and  converse,  and  are,  I  think,  sub- 
stitutes, sufficient  on  the  whole,  for  the  sociable 
pipe  and  the  friend  who  "drops  in,'1  perhaps 
even  for  the  company  of  some  customary  house- 
hold gods.  I  say  nothing  here  of  the  absolute 
great,  whose  very  names  sound  their  own  pre- 
paratories of  solemn  music,  who  require  some 
offering  of  grave  leisure  and  the  purged  ear. 
For  hours  that  are  without  question  common,  a 
man  will  do  well  to  keep  a  shelf  or  two  of  the 
minor  immortals. 

I  say  "  keep  " :  yet  the  other  night  when  I  took 

down  a  little  crook-backed  Menander  and  saw  on 

the  title-page  above    my  own  hand   the  brown 

inscriptions:  "Judocus  Bol  Lugd.  Bat.,  1652,"  and 

253 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

"Joshua  Mercer,  S.T.P.     His  Book,  1778,"  there 
came  to  mind  the  truth  that  instead  of  our  owning 
them,  it  is  we  who  are  the  temporary  pensioners 
of  our  books.     The  buyer  of  new  editions   and 
virgin  bindings  obscures  this  truth  from  himself: 
it  is  the  old  broken  calf,  the  dog's-eared  scribbled 
pages  which  tell  us  that  we  are  perhaps  but  the 
twentieth  guest  at  that  table.     Who  was  Joshua 
Mercer,  I  wonder,  who  tried  little  pieces  of  metrical 
Psalm-version  between   the  scraps  of  Menander, 
and  announced  with  a  nobly  confident  quill  that 
this  was  His  Book  f    Can  it  be  mine,  too,  I  muse  ? 
Even  in  the  present  we  begin  to  lose  our  pre- 
carious seisin :  as  a  man  nears  fifty,  he  comes  to 
know  that  he  has  read  such  and  such  a  book  for 
the  last  time;  others,  both  high  and  low,  we  shall 
re-read  perhaps  to  the  last,  but  we  have  said  good- 
bye in  the  world  of  script,  according  to  our  turns 
and  humours,  to  Longinus,  let  us  say,  to  "  Clarissa," 
to    Froissart,  to    La    Rochefoucauld,    to    "Red- 
gauntlet,"  to  Borrow,  to  Hosea  Biglow,  to  Charles 
Kingsley — to  afford  a  hotch-potch  wherein  most 
tastes  may  perhaps  find  something  to  their  account. 
It  is  well  to  bear  this  in  mind,  and  to  think  some- 
times of  the  reflux  of  the  tide  which  has  thrown 
together  here  on  the  little  shelf  these  spoils  out  of 
the  riches  of  the  great  sea.     In  the  snug  firelit  room 
on  winter  nights,  when  the  grace  or  laughter  of 
the  old  text  speaks  in  one's  ear  almost  with  human 
intonation,  it  is  good  once  in  a  way  to  remember 
254 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

the  dust  which  gathers  for  a  little  time  on  the 
unopened  pages  in  the  quiet  empty  house,  until 
the  "dispersion  of  a  gentleman's  library"  breaks 
up  the  treasure  and  scatters  the  old  and  the  new 
to  other  shores. 


255 


XXIII 

January  20. 

THE  troop  of  children  that  has  trailed  slowly 
home  from  school,  dropping  detachments  at 
cottage  gates  and  field  stiles,  finally  scatters  at 
a  corner  where  a  finger-post  offers  the  handsome 
choice  of  direction,  To  London ;  To  Trucker's  Hatch. 
The  main  body,  in  charge  of  a  biggish  girl, 
disappears  among  a  group  of  estate  cottages  on 
the  highroad  ;  a  little  company  of  three  strikes 
up  the  narrow  turning,  and  begins  the  last  stage 
of  the  seven  miles  a  day  to  school  and  home 
again.  The  lane  is  a  rough  one,  and  any  one  who 
has  stood  in  some  wintry  twilight  to  watch  the 
little  regiment  defile  down  the  hollow  between 
high  bramble-grown  banks  till  the  last  of  the 
stragglers  are  swallowed  up  in  the  misty  gloom 
of  a  vague  tree-hung  bottom,  may  perhaps  be  set 
on  thinking  about  the  two  ends  of  that  muddy 
or  dusty  trudge,  the  long  march  and  counter- 
march day  by  day  for  some  eight  or  nine  mortal 
years;  and  wondering  what  sort  of  provision 
awaits  the  travellers  at  home,  and  also  in  that 
other  headquarters  for  whose  requirements  the 
256 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

whole  mighty  manoeuvre  is  at  work.  If  the 
explorer  take  the  turning  to  Trucker's  Hatch,  he 
will  find  that  the  lane  soon  becomes  a  green 
track,  and  widens  out  into  a  long  strip  of  ragged 
common,  a  few  acres  of  pasturage  struggling  with 
gorse  and  fern  ;  a  little  farther  on  he  will  come 
to  two  or  three  fenced  fields,  a  black-timbered 
thatched  cottage  leaning  perilously  over  its  potato- 
patch,  and  a  tumble-down  little  farmstead — a 
squat  brick  dwelling-house,  an  iron  cart-shed,  one 
hayrick,  a  desolation  of  disused  fowl-houses  and 
empty  styes.  This,  common  and  houses  together, 
is  Trucker's  Hatch,  with  a  population  of  nine 
souls.  Its  school  contingent  is  now  but  three 
small  girls  ;  it  is  three  years  since  Willy  Avery 
from  the  farm  and  Joe  Mace  from  the  cottage 
passed  out  of  their  Standards  together,  and  there 
are  no  lads  at  present  at  the  Hatch  to  take  their 
places.  Willy,  best  of  boys,  a  model  for  attendance 
and  attention,  devoured  the  learning  fed  to  him 
with  the  methodic  regularity  of  a  chaff-cutter  ;  he 
won  a  scholarship  and  was  sent  to  the  grammar 
school  in  the  county  town,  and  finally  fitted  him- 
self for  a  clerkship  in  a  suburban  bank.  Joe, 
tormented  with  vast  labour  into  a  semblance  of 
reading  and  writing,  is  at  length  delivered  by  the 
age-limit  from  the  unwilling  hands  of  authority, 
and  in  a  few  months  of  blessed  holiday  forgets  all 
the  lessons  of  his  bondage.  He  forgets  the  fright- 
ful presence  of  the  sums  which  he  used  to  chatter 
257  S 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

in  his  sleep,  the  frantically  conned  page  which 
flickered  before  his  eyes ;  he  does  not  as  yet  forget 
the  impression  of  eight  years'  assiduous  contempt 
from  the  master,  as  for  a  sort  of  changeling  in  the 
educational  household,  a  creature  of  a  lower  order, 
made  the  derision  of  the  class  and  the  especial  foil 
of  his  mate  the  conquering  Willy.  Even  when  the 
thing  called  Nature-Study  impressed  itself  on  the 
great  motive  intelligences  of  the  sphere,  and  in 
due  season  came  down  to  the  regions  of  Trucker's 
Hatch,  Joe  did  not  get  the  chance  that  seemed  to 
be  thrown  in  his  way ;  he,  the  silent  stalker  of 
hedge-row  mysteries,  cunning  in  traps  and  snares, 
learned  in  nests  and  eggs  and  wild  flowers,  got  no 
hearing  at  all  from  Mr.  Dempster,  enthusiastic  in 
the  new  subject,  getting  up  the  position  of  the  pole- 
star  from  a  textbook,  and  after  a  half-holiday's 
field  expedition  sending  a  brace  of  cockchafers 
to  the  Warden  for  identification.  Joe's  hand, 
which  went  up  in  a  quite  unwonted  way  when  the 
new  lessons  began,  soon  learned  to  keep  its  place  ; 
and  the  study  of  Nature  is  inculcated  without  any 
difference  to  distinguish  it  from  the  rest  of  the 
time-table.  But  all  is  done  at  last,  and  Joe  is  free 
to  live  the  life  which,  for  as  long  as  he  can 
remember,  has  been  put  before  him  as  little  better 
than  a  beast's.  The  beasts  that  he  knows  are 
always  friendly,  at  least ;  the  big,  mannerly, 
sensible,  honest  farm-horses  are  far  better  com- 
pany than  the  tyrant  and  his  myrmidons  the 

258 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

pupil- teachers.  Joe  would  like  most  of  all  things 
to  be  a  carter-boy,  and  have  horses  to  look  after, 
and  learn  to  plough  like  his  father.  But  as  no  one 
seems  to  want  a  carter-boy,  he  is  put  to  minding 
the  stock  on  the  common,  half  a  dozen  poor  cows 
and  a  pony  belonging  to  the  farm.  He  idles  the 
day  long  about  the  gorse  clumps  and  beds  of 
bracken,  often  alone  from  daylight  to  dark ;  he 
talks  to  Duchess  or  Soldier  for  company,  cuts 
patterns  on  hazel-sticks  or  plaits  rushes,  and  fills 
his  hat  with  blackberries  or  nuts ;  the  events  of 
his  life  are  the  coming  of  the  Wednesday  grocer's 
cart,  the  chasing  of  his  charge  out  of  a  neighbour- 
ing mangold  field,  and  the  stopping  of  the  ever- 
fresh  gaps  in  the  neglected  hedge.  This  repair  he 
does  to  the  utmost  of  his  skill  and  materials,  with 
a  sort  of  make-believe  of  man's  work,  driving  his 
stakes  and  wattling  in  the  boughs  with  a  touch  of 
ancestral  skill.  A  week's  downpour  under  the 
shelter  of  an  old  sack  sets  him  on  building  for 
himself  a  little  bower  framed  of  hazel-rods,  the 
walls  stuffed  with  fern,  and  the  roof  of  grass  and 
rushes.  He  fashions  a  door  to  open  on  withy 
hinges,  and  windows  wherefrom  to  observe  his 
herds,  and  here  he  sits  through  dripping  days, 
making  his  toys  or  playing  on  an  elder  whistle 
airs  rude  enough  for  Tityrus,  till  the  gathering 
dark  tells  him  it  is  near  the  end  of  his  day,  and  he 
may  call  the  cows  together  and  drive  them  home. 
He  rarely  takes  the  old  road  down  to  the  village  ; 
259 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

sometimes  he  is  sent  to  do  the  Saturday  marketing 
and  finds  old  school-mates  serving  behind  the 
counter  of  the  general  shop,  or  sauntering  up  from 
the  cricket  field.  At  the  general  assembly  of  the 
yearly  Fair  he  meets  others  of  his  own  time, 
entered  on  various  careers- — one  in  the  gardens  at 
the  Park,  one  in  a  training-stable,  others  on  leave 
from  the  regiment  or  the  ship.  He  envies  none  of 
these  their  lot ;  there  is  only  one  with  whom  he 
would  care  to  change  places,  George  Prevett,  the 
cowman's  lad  at  Frogswell,  who  had  the  same 
desires  as  Joe,  but  has  had  his  wish.  George  leads 
the  plough  team,  and  goes  to  market  with  the 
bullocks ;  he  does  hedging  in  real  earnest,  with  a 
billhook  and  hedger's  gloves  of  his  own  ;  he  helps 
the  thatcher  on  the  ricks,  and  goes  out,  whistling 
in  solitary  importance,  with  the  old  mare  in  the 
cart  to  carry  clover  for  the  stock.  He  looks  down, 
it  is  to  be  feared,  on  the  hapless  cow-tender,  and 
the  sting  of  his  superiority  goes  home. 

Sometimes  on  Saturday  evenings  of  summer 
weather  there  comes  across  the  common  a  traveller 
oddly  out  of  keeping  with  the  scene,  whose  black 
coat  and  town  boots  have  fared  ill  in  the  five  miles 
of  dust  between  the  railway  and  the  Hatch.  Willy 
Avery,  coming  down  to  spend  a  Sunday  with  the 
old  people  at  the  farm,  nods  and  gives  the  familiar 
"  How's  self  ? "  as  he  passes  the  ragged  figure 
perched  on  the  accustomed  gate,  or  stretched  at 
length  beneath  the  shade  of  the  gorse-bushes.  At 

260 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

such  moments  of  obvious  comparison,  how  does 
each  view  the  other's  destiny  ?  What  does  the 
bank  clerk  at  a  pound  a  week  think  of  the  cow- 
minder,  counting  slow  hour  after  hour  in  all 
weathers  about  the  lonely  common  for  his  bare 
keep  ;  and  what  does  the  creature  of  boundless 
leisure  in  sun  and  wind  say  to  the  slave  of  rigid 
rules,  shut  in  at  eternal  sums  till  the  level  sun 
strikes  in  over  the  wire  blind,  and  dismisses  him 
to  the  streets  and  his  stifling  attic  ?  Willy  reads 
his  newspaper,  and  perhaps  by  this  time  has 
gathered  that  there  is  among  thinking  people  a 
reactionary  tendency  to  consider  him  and  his  kind 
not  so  purely  the  salt  of  the  earth  as  Mr.  Dempster 
in  school  gave  him  to  understand  that  they  were. 
Joe  Mace  reads  nothing — not  even  the  literature 
which  lies  at  hand,  the  scraps  of  the  county  journal 
which  the  grocer's  cart  drops,  and  the  wind  dis- 
perses about  the  gorse  on  the  common — and  with 
no  one  to  tell  him  of  wonders,  he  may  spend  his 
whole  life  after  the  present  idyllic  fashion,  and 
never  know  that  any  one  has  doubted  the  perfect- 
ness  of  the  method  of  reward  and  discouragement 
under  which  he  was  reared.  It  will  be  an  ironic 
turn  of  fortune,  not  without  precedent,  perhaps,  if 
Willy  should  feel  the  set  of  opinion  and,  conscious 
of  round  shoulders  and  pale  blood,  learn  the  easy 
catchword  about  the  land  ;  while  Joe,  tough- 
framed,  tanned  and  bleached  by  sun  and  weather, 
idles  about  the  waste  acres,  never  to  put  his  hand 

261 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

to  the  desired  carter's  whip,  nor  to  have  a  bill- 
hook and  hedger's  mittens  of  his  own.  For  him 
there  will  be  no  new  fancies  about  the  significance 
of  the  symbol  where  the  lane's  end  joins  the  high- 
road :  To  London  ;  To  Truckers  Hatch. 

The  last  time  I  was  at  the  Hatch  and  had  a 
talk  with  Joe  Mace,  I  left  him  at  the  door  of  his 
wigwam,  busy  with  a  sundial  which  he  was 
fashioning  out  of  a  bit  of  slate  and  a  hazel  wand, 
to  tell  him,  within  an  hour  or  so,  when  it  was 
dinner-time.  I  came  home  the  long  round,  by 
Nymans  and  the  Park  gates,  nursing  a  simmering 
grudge  against  Dempster  and  his  ways  ;  and  when 
I  reached  the  Green,  I  found  mine  enemy  talking 
over  his  garden  fence  with  the  Warden.  The 
Doctor  came  on  with  me,  and  the  schoolmaster 
went  back  through  his  weedy  and  neglected 
garden-patch  to  his  fireside,  his  pipe,  and  his  book 
again.  At  the  turn  of  the  road  I  looked  back  and 
made  a  summary  note  of  the  phrontisterion  in  its 
elements  :  there  stood  the  gaunt  building,  part 
old  cement  and  part  raw  red  brick,  built  at  the 
lowest  tender,  its  skimped  utility  joined  with  a 
curious  waste  of  semi-ecclesiastical  ornament ;  there 
was  the  miry,  dank  playground,  the  perky  school- 
house  with  its  slatternly  blinds  and  neglected 
garden  ;  and  in  a  stuffy  room  my  fancy  saw  the 
long,  ungainly  figure  of  the  master,  his  narrow 
face  bent  over  his  book  with  the  frown  of  strenuous 
assimilation.  He  was  reading,  the  Warden  told 

262 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

me,  a  new  monograph  on  Education  and  the  Rural 
Mind,  improving  himself,  as  he  never  ceases  to 
do,  and  removing  himself  one  more  step  from  the 
barbarous  void  of  yesterday.  He  had  shown  the 
Warden  the  book,  and  had  flourished  a  little  upon 
the  new  horizon  opening  before  the  benighted 
dwellers  in  the  fields ;  there  was  something  about 
the  "  nobilaty  of  la'fbour,"  says  the  Warden  (drop- 
ping into  a  peculiarly  horrible  inflection  which, 
for  an  alien,  he  has  caught  pretty  nearly),  and 
about  "  intere"stin'  the  children  in  the  loife  of  the 
fields  and  the  'edges."  Excellent,  said  the  Warden : 
he  supposed  they  might  teach  the  boys  to  plough, 
for  instance  ?  "  Nhaow,"  replies  Dempster,  swell- 
ing with  the  pleasure  of  imparting  a  fundamental 
truth.  "  Nhaow ;  but  we  shall  teach  them  to 
mdik  pleaows  ! "  "I  didn't  ask  who  was  to  use 
them,"  said  the  Warden  ;  "  he'd  got  as  much  as 
his  head  could  carry  for  one  day.  What  do  you 
think  of  his  idea  of  taking  classes  over  one  of  the 
farms,  and  giving  them  object-lessons  ?  " 

I  told  him  what  I  thought  of  the  several 
elements  of  the  scheme  :  Dempster's  qualifications 
for  the  job,  who  was  born  in  Hackney,  whose  soul 
still  inhabits  the  Seven  Sisters'  Road  :  the  boys, 
many  of  whom  have  lived  on  farms  all  their  lives, 
and  have  a  finger-end  knowledge  of  the  things 
which  Dempster  guesses  at  out  of  books  :  and  old 
Tully  or  Mrs.  Ventom  as  a  likely  third  factor  in 
the  proposed  invasion  of  growing  crops  and  hedges. 

263 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

Yes,  the  Warden  had  thought  of  that  side  of  it. 
On  the  whole,  he  fancies  we  are  somehow  not 
getting  full  value  for  our  money  and  trouble  in 
the  schools.  Is  Dempster  a  particularly  bad 
specimen,  did  I  think  ?  I  told  him  I  had  known 
others  not  much  better  equipped  for  their  trade. 
There  are,  of  course,  worthy  and  amenable  souls 
here  and  there,  chiefly,  in  my  experience,  to  be 
found  in  the  smaller  schools  and  lower  classes  ; 
but  in  general  there  seems  to  be  a  common  stamp 
of  a  remarkably  well-defined  capacity  and  interest ; 
a  summary,  coarse-fingered  dealing  with  children's 
minds ;  a  consuming  zeal  for  "  Progress  "  ;  and  an 
unresting  self-assertion,  a  prickly  jealousy  for  the 
status  and  profit  of  the  profession.  Dempster  was 
once  discovered  weeping,  heart-broken  under  a 
tree  at  a  school-treat,  because  his  wife  had  not 
been  asked  to  tea  on  the  Vicarage  lawn,  but  had 
been  left  with  the  village  mothers  in  the  tent.  He 
loses  no  chance  of  arranging  a  date  or  writing  a 
letter  on  his  own  motion.  He  thinks  London  is 
the  world,  and  is  never  tired  of  telling  the  children, 
with  jeering  comparisons,  that  they  are  a  back- 
ward and  benighted  race.  He  wreaks  against 
antiquity  a  spite  which  almost  seems  personal ; 
all  that  is  old  and  peaceable  and  slow  is  held  up  as 
anachronous — a  crime  against  the  new  order,  before 
long,  one  infers,  to  be  fitted  with  proper  penalties. 
On  the  whole,  I  don't  think  we  are  getting  a 
good  return  for  our  expenditure  on  the  schools. 
264 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

Of  course,  the  Warden  says,  we  haven't  made 
the  least  attempt  to  get  the  right  sort  of  men  for 
the  work.  "  C'est  1'effet  d'une  haute  ame  et  bien 
forte,  de  savoir  condescendre  a  ces  allures  pueriles 
et  les  guider,"  he  quotes.  By  the  way,  he  hears 
that  in  France  they  have  quite  taken  up  Montaigne 
lately  as  an  authority  on  education.  He  wonders 
whether  we  shall  ever  find  in  England  really  able 
men  going  into  elementary  school-teaching  as 
people  go  into  mission  and  slum  work,  and  that 
sort  of  thing  ?  But  about  Dempster  and  his  kind  : 
if  we  could  get  people  to  look  at  results  for  a 
minute,  and  leave  principles  alone  for  a  bit, 
wouldn't  there  be  some  evidence  as  to  the  working 
of  the  plan?  Of  course,  it's  safe  to  fly  straight 
in  the  face  of  any  modern  general  proposition : 
the  common  party-opposition  always  goes  for 
cavilling  details ;  no  one  thinks  of  questioning 
the  fundamental  lie.  I  give  the  Warden  my  im- 
pression of  some  twenty  years'  output  of  the 
phrontisterion — the  dull  mass  of  mechanic  learn- 
ing, forgotten  in  a  few  months  after  the  discharge ; 
the  large  proportion  of  feeble  wits  among  the 
scholars ;  the  half-dozen  brilliant  minds  that  have 
won  through  the  press,  taken  county  scholarships 
and  attained  positions  as  clerks,  like  Willy  Avery  ; 
the  spoiled  rustics,  cheated  of  their  vocation,  like 
Joe  Mace.  There  is  enough  to  condemn  the 
system  in  the  vicious  circle  of  its  ideal :  it  cannot 
make  men  and  women  for  the  world,  but  turns 

265 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

the  minds  which  show  a  little  more  promise  than 
the  rest  into  yet  more  instruments  of  its  own 
machinery,  pupil-teachers,  certificated  masters  and 
mistresses,  initiated  into  the  sacred  mystery  and 
tradition  of  the  status  and  interests  of  the  teacher. 
And  in  all  the  eternal  squabble  about  the  educa- 
tional machinery,  you  will  never  hear  the  least 
question  raised  about  the  quality  of  the  learning 
it  supplies. 

Of  course  not,  the  Warden  agrees ;  that  would 
be  far  too  direct,  and  too  near  the  realities  of  life. 
We  have  civilised  ourselves  altogether  out  of  our 
hold  on  fundamentals  and  live  fact,  and  we  can 
only  fumble  with  derived  and  secondary  relations. 
It  is  mostly  due,  he  thinks,  to  the  way  in  which 
just  now  all  place  and  power  has  been  secured 
by  the  clever  people,  the  capable  business  folk, 
strong  heads  and  thick  fingers,  who  have  shoved 
the  rare  heart-thinkers,  the  real  vivifying  geniuses, 
out  of  practical  politics,  if  they  have  not  got  rid 
of  the  breed  altogether. 

We  came  hereabouts  in  our  discussion  to  the 
Almshouse  gate,  and  went  our  several  ways.  As 
I  came  home  by  the  field-path,  I  dreamed  of 
impossible  conjunctions  by  which  our  Joe  Maces, 
on  their  drenched  and  lonely  commons,  and  the 
topmost  powers  of  the  department  in  their  official 
residences  could  be  brought  together  without  any 
intermediate  Dempster,  and  given  a  sight  of  each 
other's  minds.  I  think  Joe  would  understand ; 
266 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

as  to  those  public  men,  I  have  doubts.  At  least, 
they  would  not  care,  any  more  than  they  do  for 
any  other  matter  of  vital  need  that  is  not  exploit- 
able to  party  ends.  As  they  tug  at  head  or  feet 
of  the  body  politic  to  gain  the  ivapa  j3,ooro£vra, 
they  have  no  time  to  think  whether  the  soul  be 
not  already  gone  out  amid  the  uproar  and  bloody 
dust.  There  is,  of  course,  a  reckoning  for  all  this  : 
in  the  sudden  cool  and  calm  of  that  vestibule  into 
which  every  fighter  steps  at  last,  stands  Tisiphone, 
to  deal  with  the  strange  breed  of  statesmen  who 
turned  their  hands  against  each  other  and  fought 
for  fighting's  sake,  while  they  left  untouched  not 
only  the  matters  intractable  save  in  a  settled  state 
of  internal  peace,  but  the  precise  and  fatal  sum 
of  all  the  true  necessities  of  a  state. 


XXIV 

February  21. 

I  SOMETIMES  amuse  myself,  when  I  have  spare 
time  on  my  hands  in  the  village,  or  when  the 
Warden  is  not  at  home,  with  usurping  a  place 
among  the  old  men  on  the  southern  bench  in  the 
Almshouse  quadrangle,  and  fancying  myself  a 
pensioner  with  the  rest,  a  fellow  on  the  foundation, 
finally  berthed  in  that  harbour  of  ancient  peace. 
The  gate  stands  wide  all  day  to  invite  the  world- 
ling; the  dark  archway  of  the  lodge  frames  a 
glimpse  of  lawns,  of  white  pigeons  on  lichen- 
covered  tiles,  of  weathered  buttresses  and  trefoil- 
headed  windows,  keen  and  clear  as  images  in  a 
camera  obscura.  Once  within  the  quadrangle, 
the  wanderer  finds  that  he  has  entered  a  new 
world  :  the  noises  of  the  street  die  as  in  a  vacuum  ; 
the  sundial  on  the  gable  tells  other  hours  than  those 
measured  by  the  rumbling  wheels  and  clattering 
steps  without.  Here  survives  a  quality  which  has 
been  expelled  from  prouder  colleges,  the  secret 
of  repose  which,  so  old  masters  tell  us,  once  dwelt 
in  Oxford  and  Cambridge  courts.  Here  are  no 
strident  shouts,  no  twanglmg  banjos,  no  blazer- 
268 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

clad  groups  to  make  discord  with  the  reverend 
walls.  The  bent  figures  of  the  gownsmen  sunning 
on  the  benches  or  pacing  the  walks,  in  academicals 
of  that  subfusk  hue  dispensed  with  under  some 
easier  statutes,  give  the  last  touch  to  the  picture 
of  quietude.  All  is  decent,  ordered,  easeful ;  three 
centuries'  habit  of  repose  seems  to  have  grown 
upon  the  very  stones  of  the  place.  There  are 
times  when  a  man  may  doubt  if  he  could  do  better, 
some  day  when  the  cares  of  his  own  small  realm 
shall  lie  heavy  on  his  head,  than  put  on  the  gown 
and  badge,  and  find  ease  in  some  such  corner  as 
this — "  a  place  "  (as  Thomas  Newcome  of  Grey 
Friars)  "  for  an  old  fellow  when  his  career  is  over 
to  hang  his  sword  up,  to  humble  his  soul,  and 
wait  thankfully  for  the  end  " — to  obey  the  call 
of  morning  and  evening  bells,  to  tend  his  garden - 
patch,  to  feed  the  pigeons  on  the  grass,  to  drowse 
under  the  southern  wall  in  the  sun  which  almost 
seems  to  stand  still  over  the  little  haven  of  used 
force  and  spent  hopes.  There  are  other  hours  when 
the  sanctuary  appears  too  nearly  as  a  hospital, 
perhaps  as  a  prison.  The  very  plan  of  the  narrow 
cloister,  the  sheltered  corners,  implies  weakness 
and  decay ;  the  iron-sparred  windows  and  the 
porter's  punctual  keys  assert  their  meaning.  A 
few  years'  acquaintance  with  the  inner  economy 
of  the  foundation  will  show  a  man  something  of 
the  real  character  of  the  bedesman's  life ;  he  will 
learn  how  much— or  how  little— of  the  outward 
269 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

peace  of  the  house  is  reflected  in  the  minds  of  the 
fraternity ;  how  far  he  may  expect  to  find  among 
the  fast  changing  company  any  signs  of  a  sense 
of  sodality,  or  of  solemnity  as  at  the  last  stage 
of  the  journey,  with  the  shadow  seldom  lifted  very 
far  from  the  doors.  It  seems  at  times  a  school 
to  which  the  scholars  have  come  too  late.  The 
Warden  seldom  cares  to  talk  of  his  dealings  with 
that  indocile  second  childhood  ;  one  can  guess  for 
one's  self  something  of  jealousies  and  bickerings 
in  the  narrow  neighbourhood,  of  fallow  grounds 
wherein  the  roots  of  old  naughtiness  stir  and  shoot 
in  a  late  spring  of  sheltered  leisure.  But,  the 
Warden  says,  if  he  is  sometimes  ready  to  despair 
over  the  old  lessons  still  to  learn  by  the  last  gleam 
of  day,  there  will  be  at  times  a  scholar  or  two 
from  whom  one  knows  one  has  almost  everything 
to  learn,  from  whom  one  may  learn,  perhaps,  to 
mind  one's  duty  in  the  way  of  hope. 

I  am  sufficiently  familiar  in  the  house  to  know 
something  of  the  diverse  characters  of  the  inmates. 
The  gown  by  no  means  makes  all  equal  under  its 
iron-grey  folds.  There  is  not  much  in  common 
between  old  Thomas  Harding,  the  senior  of  the 
house,  a  farm  labourer  in  his  ninetieth  year,  who, 
with  palsied  head  and  knotted  rheumatic  hands 
clasped  over  his  crutch,  dozes  out  the  end  of  his 
regular,  ceaselessly  laborious  and  useful  days,  and 
George  Everest,  a  little  tradesman,  corn-chandler 
and  wood-dealer,  who  has  reached  a  harbour  at 
270 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

length,  after  forty  years  of  honestly  incapable 
struggles  and  failures,  on  whom  the  new-found 
leisure  sometimes  hangs  with  maddening  weight. 
It  would  be  hard,  again,  to  find  a  wider  difference 
than  that  which  lies  between  Eliphaz  Puttick,  a 
decayed  farmer,  a  man  who  has  held  his  two 
hundred  acres,  silent  and  morose,  always  brooding 
over  that  incredible  scurvy  trick  of  fortune  which 
has  brought  him  here,  and  John  Blaker,  the  gnome- 
like  shrivelled  little  man,  full  of  restless  activity 
and  unsuppressible  humour,  needle-sharp  beneath 
an  elaborate  pose  of  short- wittedness,  whose  descent 
to  the  almshouse  from  the  position  of  odd  man 
and  stable-help  to  Elihu  Dean  the  carrier,  is  the 
standing  joke  of  one  of  the  merriest  lives  that  ever 
breathed.  Such  broader  differences  between  man 
and  man  I  can  see  for  myself ;  with  the  help  of 
the  Warden's  hints  I  can  guess  at  variations  in 
individuals,  according  to  time  and  chance.  Some- 
times the  husk  of  decent  habit  falls  off,  and  old 
devilry  awakes,  in  horrid  travesty  of  young  blood. 
Reverend  grey  heads  which  nodded  over  their 
chapel  psalms  in  the  morning,  spend  their  exeats 
in  an  ancient  way,  and  at  locking-up  time  alarm 
the  quadrangle  with  feeble  war.  In  one,  he  with  the 
fine  patriarchal  head  and  the  courteous  manners,  a 
little  too  ready  in  ordinary  with  his  texts,  a  little 
too  obviously  on  the  side  of  law  and  order,  the 
smouldering  of  old  vice  flickers  up  under  its  ashes, 
and  the  black  histories  of  youth  are  mixed  with 
271 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

the  trick  of  mechanic  piety.  Sometimes  one  is 
convinced  that  the  sad  old  runagates  are  the  sur- 
vivors of  a  ruder,  tougher  race  than  ours. 

At  times  when  I  sit  on  the  bench  and  fancy 
that  I  feel  the  gown  about  my  shoulders,  I  put 
aside  the  recollection  of  such  shadows  of  the 
cloister,  and  think  rather  of  the  visible  peace  and 
order  of  the  place ;  of  the  trim  plots  which  lie 
behind  the  quad,  where  the  pensioners  stoop  and 
halt  about  their  garden-rows ;  of  the  Sunday 
holiday,  when  in  state  of  best  blue  gowns  and 
silver  badges  the  old  fellows  act  the  host  to 
visitors  from  the  village  or  the  country  round, 
sons  and  daughters,  grandchildren,  old  mates, 
when  the  quad  is  alive  with  the  movement  of  the 
outer  world  and  sounds  with  unaccustomed  chil- 
dren's treble  ;  of  the  picture  of  the  chapel  benches 
at  evensong,  when  the  broken  voices  repeat  the 
Nunc  Dimittis,  and  the  quiet  and  the  dusk  deep- 
ening on  the  familiar  memorial  stones  touch  per- 
haps even  the  rudest  minds  with  a  finer  influence, 
with  a  sense  of  the  "  short  remaining  watch  that 
yet  Our  senses  have  to  wake."  There  is  a  text 
carved  beneath  the  coat-of-arms  over  the  inner 
archway  of  the  gate,  the  cause  of  many  a  puzzled 
construe  to  strangers  as  they  pass  out  under  it. 
But  those  who  know  something  of  the  house  and 
its  company  may  find  an  inner  fitness  of  meaning 
in  the  founder's  paradox,  Habenti  dabitur  et 
abundabit. 

272 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

The  last  time  that  I  took  my  place  on  the  bench 
and  enrolled  myself  a  visionary  member  of  the 
brotherhood  was  on  a  mild  February  day,  the  first 
truce  with  winter,  the  unmistakeable  turning  point 
of  the  year.  The  sunny  afternoon  had  sent  most 
of  the  brethren  into  the  village  on  their  slow- 
footed  errands  and  marketings,  and  I  had  the 
seat  mainly  to  myself  for  an  hour  or  more.  The 
sun  was  warm  on  the  stone,  shining  through  a 
still  misty  air  that  softened  at  once  light,  colour, 
and  sound.  The  winter  sleep  was  almost  over; 
one  more  spring  was  on  the  way,  with  the  in- 
extricable pleasures  and  interests  of  the  living 
season.  The  busy  time  on  the  land,  the  soul- 
steadying  routine  which  balances  the  world — et 
post  malam  segetem  serendum  est — was  almost 
due,  but  not  just  yet.  It  was  a  day  for  licensed 
idling,  when  a  man  might  with  a  clear  conscience 
cross  his  hands  behind  his  head,  shut  his  eyes 
and  let  the  world  go  by,  without  the  accusation 
even  of  that  vacant  susurrus  in  his  ears  which  as 
a  child  I  used  to  fancy  was  the  audible  pace  of 
time.  There  was  just  enough  of  actual  sound  in 
the  air,  a  mingling  of  the  sparrows'  chirp  and  the 
ruffle  of  the  pigeons'  wings  with  a  subdued  medley 
of  the  village  noises,  to  stop  that  inward  ear,  and, 
together  with  the  mild  light  and  warmth,  to  take 
off  the  minor  energies  of  apprehension  and  leave 
the  centred  mind  in  majestic  indolence.  But  at 
our  best  we  can  never  idle  so  serenely  and  whole- 
2/3  T 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

heartedly  as  the  beasts  do.  The  gnat  on  the  ivy- 
leaf  near  my  head,  stroking  his  forelegs  together 
in  the  bland  sunlight ;  the  pigeons,  making  believe 
again  and  again  to  settle  on  the  tiles,  but  always 
away  in  fresh  circles  high  in  the  pale  blue;  the 
midge  that  crawls  across  my  hand,  his  tiny  flat- 
set  wings  diamond-bright  as  ever,  but  his  venom, 
it  seems,  harmless  yet  after  the  winter's  chill ;  the 
tortoiseshell  butterfly  come  out  of  his  winter 
quarters,  one  wing  smutched  of  its  colour  down 
to  the  grey  anatomy,  the  other  snipped  by  some 
marauding  beak,  who  opens  and  shuts  his  ragged 
sails  to  the  sun  on  the  ivy  berries :  all  these  take 
the  present  good  with  no  ill-conditioned  inquiry, 
and  give  praise  for  the  use  of  the  hearth  of  the 
universe  in  a  way  which  is  the  simplest  of  all,  and 
yet  usually  the  last  to  be  achieved,  if  ever,  in 
human  thanksgivings.  I  own  my  fellowship  with 
such  poor  pensioners  as  these  while  we  come 
abroad  together  to  greet  the  broader  light,  con- 
scious of  the  sunward-leaning  sphere.  We  are 
almsmen,  as  much  as  the  grey-coat  brethren  here 
who  creep  from  their  winter  fires,  their  sick-beds 
of  customary  bronchitis  and  rheumatics,  into  the 
blessed  warmth  for  one  more  term  of  the  good 
days.  Even  if  my  faith  in  the  disablement  of 
the  midge's  bite  were  less  active  than  it  is,  I 
should  let  him  range  at  his  will  over  my  knuckles ; 
to-day  we  are  too  much  in  accord  to  think  of 
coming  to  blows. 

274 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

I  believe  that  insufficient  attention  has  on  the 
whole  been  given  to  certain  sets  of  feelings  proper 
to  the  elderly  stages  of  life.  We  too  commonly 
regard  the  characteristics  of  latter  middle  age  as 
only  the  leavings  of  youth,  results  of  habit,  bye- 
products,  if  not  mere  detritus.  Of  course  there 
are  virtues  to  be  adjusted,  early  sentiments  to  be 
rubbed  down  to  serviceable  bluntness  by  tumbling 
in  the  world ;  but  we  neglect  the  finenesses  of 
perception,  the  edges  of  analytic  instinct  which 
only  begin  to  get  their  final  polish  at  about  forty, 
the  solicitudes  from  which  a  man  may  look  back 
with  a  chill  of  wonder  on  the  barbaric  motions 
of  the  simpler-minded,  sounder-lunged  years.  Not 
the  least  among  these  gifts  of  Time's  attrition  I 
should  place  a  change  in  our  relation  to  the  lower 
lives,  a  hesitation,  or  something  more,  as  to  the 
terms  of  our  suzerainty,  a  livelier  compunction  in 
the  necessary  laying  of  our  clumsy  hands  on  the 
little  existences  which  for  ever  keep  getting  in 
our  way.  For  myself,  I  find  the  sorrowful  warfare 
of  the  gardener — wasps'-nests  and  mole-traps,  and 
slug-hunts  on  spring  nights — afford  more  than 
enough  to  satisfy  my  sporting  instincts.  I  have 
come  to  a  point  where  I  fail  to  see  the  fun  of 
killing  things.  I  preach  nothing  on  this  head  to 
others ;  I  can  remember  my  own  gunning  days ; 
I  bear  about  with  me  the  score  of  my  miserable 
little  kills.  Let  Harry  Mansel  bombard  the  Sims- 
Bigg  pheasants  three  days  a  week,  and  even  the 
275 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

Warden  have  his  Saturday  at  Frogswell  now  and 
then  in  the  season ;  for  my  choice,  I  have  had 
enough  of  death  already ;  I  would  rather  patch  up 
and  piece  out  shaky  lives  to  last  as  many  suns 
as  they  may,  and  share  with  all  sorts  of  creatures 
the  kindly  almshouse  benches  and  south  corners 
of  the  world.  To-day  I  have  my  own  way :  here 
we  are  all  once  more  through  the  dark  and  cold, 
facing  the  new  year  valiantly,  midges  and  butter- 
flies and  pigeons  on  the  sunny  roofs,  and  old 
gownsmen  mending  nicely  from  bouts  of  the  time- 
honoured  complaints.  Up  in  my  own  fir  trees, 
as  the  light  begins  to  thicken  towards  roosting 
time,  the  pheasants  will  be  kok-kokking  lustily, 
safe  for  another  nine  months  from  the  rattle  of 
the  beaters'  sticks  and  the  glint  on  the  guns  where 
the  hazels  thin  towards  the  tail  of  the  wood.  I 
do  not  love  the  bird ;  he  is  a  showy,  noisy  alien, 
always  discordant  in  English  woodlands  ;  yet  shall 
the  Frogswell  coverts  be  free-warren  before  I  clean 
the  rust  from  my  old  barrels  again. 

Here  the  Warden  came  into  the  quad  from  the 
entry,  and  bending  his  shaggy  brows  to  see  who 
was  sitting  in  the  sun  under  the  wall,  crossed  the 
grass  and  joined  me  on  the  bench.  He  also  showed 
in  his  own  way  something  of  the  pleasant  influences 
of  the  time.  He  was  relieved  to  have  two  or  three 
of  the  old  men  off  the  sick-list  and  managing  for 
themselves  again.  I  found,  too,  that  Molly  Crofts 
was  coming  early  next  month  on  one  of  those 

276 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

rejuvenating  visits  of  hers.  And  there  was  a  sub- 
stratum of  very  decided  satisfaction  in  his  temper 
concerning  a  review  of  his  in  last  week's  Orb,  a 
very  irreverent  review  of  a  weighty  modern  philo- 
sopher, which  he  had  hardly  fancied  any  editor 
would  print,  and  which  had  drawn  the  philosopher 
like  a  shot.  Under  the  mild  breathings  of  the 
hour,  he  was  inclined  to  be  patient  with  the  heavy 
thinker  whom  he  really  seemed  to  have  upset  very 
much,  and  to  be  benignly  contemptuous  towards 
the  physiological  people  and  their  thumbings  of 
the  awful  complexity  of  life — awful  yet  entrancing, 
more  and  more  every  day  we  live,  says  the  Warden. 
He  even  seemed  ready  to  suffer — I  would  not  say 
gladly,  but  rather  more  equably  than  on  other 
occasions — the  Biblical  critics  with  that  modest 
comparative  title,  fellows  whose  taste  no  one  would 
trust  to  meddle  with  a  line  in  Euripides.  For 
once  he  shows  signs  of  a  mental  spring-tide,  and 
feels  the  sphere  of  thought  tilting  towards  the 
light  together  with  the  daedal  globe.  We  are 
getting  out  of  the  frozen  slush  of  "science"  by 
degrees,  he  thinks  ;  when  we  are  tired  of  splitting 
up  the  atom  we  may  get  back  to  the  real  mys- 
teries— such  as  humour,  for  instance,  and  the 
thing  we  call  vulgarity,  or  the  real  philosophy 
of  history. 

Or  beauty,  I  should  have  added  ;  every  man  has 
his  particular  province  in  these  neglected  fields, 
marked  out  for  himself,  if  he  will  but  look  about 
277 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

him.  At  any  rate  I  can  agree  with  the  Warden 
that  if  we  want  work,  there  is  boundless  and  almost 
untouched  matter  ready  to  our  hands. 

The  Warden  presently  went  in  to  finish  Alms- 
house  accounts  for  the  audit ;  and  when  the  after- 
noon began  to  decline,  I  left  the  bench  and  took 
the  footpath  home.  The  sun  sank  to  a  cloudless 
setting  on  the  hills,  and  fired  the  land  with  a  deep 
afterglow.  As  I  came  in  at  the  field  gate  the 
light  on  the  fir  trunks  was  wine-red  and  rusty 
crimson,  and  the  dark  masses  of  the  boughs  and 
the  brown  garden  plots  loomed  in  majestic  russets 
and  purples.  A  blackbird  close  to  the  house  sud- 
denly warbled  a  turn  or  two  of  the  unforgotten 
song,  and  a  smell  of  live  grass  and  coltsfoot-leaves 
came  on  the  air.  It  was  one  of  the  hours  of 
natural  elation ;  and  when  the  glorying  humour 
takes  us,  it  is  good  economy  to  make  the  most 
of  the  chance.  It  is  the  minor  key,  after  all,  which 
is  easy  and  cheap  and  vulgar — to  go  back  to  one 
of  the  Warden's  mysteries.  In  this  genial  twilight, 
at  the  turn  of  the  year,  with  the  better  days  coming, 
with  life  still  unrolling  the  inexpressible  interest 
of  all  its  depths  and  subtleties  before  us,  it  is  not 
very  difficult  to  sound  a  major  scale.  The  days 
will  come  again,  the  days  of  aches  and  tempers, 
proper  and  alien,  of  east  winds  temporal  and 
spiritual,  of  outward  rubs  and  an  ingrowing  soul, 
when  the  temptation  to  the  sneaking  underbred 
minor  chord  will  be  sore.  The  thing  to  aim  at 
278 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

is  a  workable  temper,  balanced  between  the  ex- 
tremes, a  frame  of  mind  which  can  keep  its  counsel 
in  the  frozen  time,  and  expand  frankly  at  the 
spring.  One  can  wish  for  such  a  rational  state, 
in  which  a  man  can  sit  about  in  sunny  almshouse 
corners,  and  often  forget  the  porter's  keys ;  can 
make  room  for  other  people's  views,  allow  the 
Warden's  theories  or  Harry  Hansel's  aims,  or 
sometimes  see  things  as  they  should  be  in  Molly 
Crofts'  eyes  ;  and  can  manage  on  his  own  account 
to  observe  with  a  not  unadvised  content  how  life 
burns  away,  as  the  ruddy  glow  kindles  evening  by 
evening  on  the  fir  boughs  overhead. 


279 


XXV 

April  1 8. 

"  WE'RE  going  to  Rivers  Wood  to-morrow,  to  get 
primroses  and  have  tea  at  the  High  Beeches  ;  the 
Warden,  and  Molly,  and  Harry  Mansel,  Lady 
Anne,  and  the  Sims-Bigg  girls,  and  perhaps  the 
Yarborough-Greenhalghs.  Suppose  you  take  a 
holiday  for  once  and  come  with  us."  Thus  Mary 
Enderby  to  me  as  we  met  during  the  morning 
expatiation  in  the  street,  on  a  wonderful  April 
day,  one  of  a  memorable  week,  all  sun  and  kindly 
winds,  with  a  soft  dripping  shower  or  two  at  the 
nick  of  time  to  keep  everything  in  tune,  a  spell  of 
weather  which  brought  out  the  leaves  and  greened 
the  meadows  all  at  once,  and  gave  the  shining 
street  a  look  of  summer.  The  shops  rig  out  their 
sun-blinds,  the  cottage  gardens  are  gay  with  tulips 
and  daffodils,  the  forenoon  shopping  hour  is  brave 
with  another  early  blossoming,  the  outbreak  from 
winter  coats  and  hats.  There  is  a  roving  spirit 
in  the  air ;  people  who  are  content  for  the  rest 
of  the  year  with  the  length  of  the  village  street, 
feel  an  adventurous  motion,  and  so  we  hear  of 

280 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

long  walks  and  primrose  'gatherings,  and  tea  in 
Rivers  Wood. 

There  was  the  least  sarcastic  inflection  in  the 
last  part  of  my  cousin's  invitation.  My  observa- 
tion, that  I  am  almost  the  only  person  in  the 
neighbourhood  who  is  not  blessed  with  boundless 
leisure,  does  not  commend  itself  everywhere  as  it 
deserves  to  do.  Mary  and  some  others  of  her  sect 
do  not  consider  that,  granted  certain  contentions 
for  the  sake  of  argument,  one's  chains  may  be  all 
the  tighter  for  having  been  riveted  on  by  one's  self. 
Still,  I  thought  that  for  once  I  might  show  her 
that  I  could  get  out  of  bounds  if  I  liked  ;  besides, 
Rivers  Wood  is  in  a  way  my  own  preserves,  and  if 
there  was  to  be  any  junketing  as  near  my  borders 
as  that,  I  would  as  soon  have  a  hand  in  it  as  not. 
So  I  said  I  would  try  and  arrange  things,  and  if  I 
found  I  could  manage  it,  I  would  be  at  the  lower 
heave-gate  at  three  o'clock  on  the  morrow — always 
provided  that  the  weather  was  still  fine.  Mary, 
who  did  not  seem  to  take  my  acceptance  to  be  so 
conditional  as  I  had  made  it,  gave  a  half-glance  at 
the  wrong  quarter  of  the  sky  and  said  she  was 
sure  it  was  set  fair  for  another  week  at  least ;  and 
so  left  me,  and  went  on  to  the  Almshouse  to  arrange 
details  of  supply  with  Molly  Crofts. 

The  morrow  was  fair  enough,  with  a  faint  veil  of 
vapour  across  the  sky,  which  meant  the  approaching 
break  up  of  the  spell  of  delicate  weather.  I  was 
at  the  heave-gate  early  enough  to  have  to  wait  a 

281 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

quarter  of  an  hour  for  the  last  of  the  party — Mary 
Enderby  and  Molly  Crofts.  We  rambled  down 
the  long  rides  and  took  sundry  turnings  and  split 
up  into  groups,  and  some  of  us  lost  the  way,  and 
there  was  calling  and  answering  and  reappear- 
ances at  corners  of  the  wood-ways  to  form  fresh 
combinations  of  company  ;  and  I  think  that  most 
of  us  responded  tolerably  to  the  spell  of  the  after- 
noon. A  week  of  April  drought  brooding  warm 
on  the  wet  hollows  of  the  woodland,  still  stored  full 
of  the  winter's  rain,  had  brought  out  the  flowers  in 
a  way  only  seen  two  or  three  times  in  a  life.  The 
primroses  strewed  the  slopes  as  though  they  had 
been  flung  and  shot  in  armfuls  from  fairy  baskets, 
or  as  though  Flora's  apron  had  slipped  and  let  out 
all  her  store  together;  where  they  stood  a  little 
thinner  there  were  drifts  and  clouds  of  wind- 
flowers  ;  violets  trailed  over  the  steeper  banks,  and 
the  just-coming  hyacinths  threw  a  misty  blue  over 
their  beds  of  dusk-green  leafage.  The  shadows  of 
the  saplings  lay  faint  and  sharp  across  the  grass  of 
the  rides,  and  went  on  to  lose  themselves  in  mazes 
of  thin  tracery  among  the  dead  leaves  and  twigs, 
the  ivy-trails  and  mosses  of  the  thicket.  The  air 
was  warm  and  soft,  stirring  southerly  enough  to 
bring  out  all  the  scents  of  the  wood — the  wet  earth 
and  moss,  the  keen  sweetness  of  the  budding 
larches,  above  everything  else,  the  infinity  of 
primroses. 

Some  had  brought  baskets  for  flower-picking, 
282 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

and  fell  to  their  business  about  the  green  shaw ; 
the  rest  idled  through  its  winding  paths,  up  the 
brows  and  down  the  gills,  or  sat  and  talked  on 
faggots  or  logs,  all  making  their  way  sooner  or 
later  towards  the  High  Beeches,  where  I  had  in- 
structed Mrs.  Ventom  to  meet  us  with  kettle  and 
crockery  from  Burntoak,  and  to  have  ready  the 
elements  of  tea.  In  this  gradual  progress  towards 
the  rendezvous,  at  first  the  men  and  the  women 
sided  off  by  themselves,  Sussex  fashion  ;  and 
Harry  Mansel  and  I  and  the  Warden  smoked  a 
pipe  or  two  under  a  faggot-stack,  and  watched  the 
ladies  at  their  flower-gathering,  nymph-like,  far  off 
along  the  shining  slopes  between  the  saplings. 
Then,  when  the  baskets  were  full,  we  all  met  and 
paired  off  at  the  crossways  in  the  middle  of  the 
wood,  and  made  towards  the  great  clump  of  beeches 
two  and  two.  Lady  Anne  and  the  Warden  led  the 
way,  and  were  soon  out  of  sight ;  Mary  Enderby 
and  I  presently  sat  down  on  a  dry  bank,  and  let 
the  rest  go  by  us — Harry  Mansel  with  the  younger 
Miss  Sims-Bigg,  and  Molly  Crofts  and  Mab 
Yarborough-Greenhalgh  arm-in-arm  in  a  young 
ladies'  conference,  altogether  superior  to  the  in- 
sufficiency of  cavaliers. 

I  dare  say,  if  we  had  not  fallen  into  that  particular 
sorting  or  shuffling  of  the  party,  both  my  cousin 
and  myself  might  have  had  something  to  say  about 
the  agreeableness  of  the  hour  and  the  place ;  but 
when  we  are  in  company  we  seem  to  have  the 

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LONEWOOD   CORNER 

quality  of  extinguishing  in  each  other  the  smallest 
glimmering  of  sentiment  of  any  kind,  and  we  did 
not  audibly  admire  the  view.  It  was  a  view  which 
certainly  might  have  excused  rhapsodies :  beyond 
the  flower-strewn  foreground  a  gap  in  the  pale 
emerald  screen  of  the  larch  plantation  gave  sight 
of  the  happy  valley,  the  familiar  fields  and  roofs,  the 
spire,  the  ridges  of  purple  woods,  and  the  Downs  a 
fess  of  hyacinthine  vapour  over  it  all.  The  southern 
sky  was  meshed  and  threaded  with  a  slowly 
thickening  and  rising  veil,  foretelling  the  rain  which 
would  come  to-morrow  to  break  up  prosperously 
the  April  drought.  Overhead  a  blackbird  sang, 
so  near  us  in  the  larch  that  we  could  see  the 
motion  of  his  yellow  bill  as  he  trolled  out  his 
richest  warble,  or  listened  a  moment,  head  aslant, 
to  the  other  voices  of  the  grove.  From  the  fallow 
on  the  edge  of  the  plantation  came  the  pipe  of  a 
plover  beating  to  and  fro  ;  and  a  stock-dove  bore 
a  drowsy  burden  to  the  rest  somewhere  deep  in  the 
hollows  of  the  wood. 

As  enthusiasm  was  barred  by  that  reciprocal 
self-denying  ordinance  of  ours,  my  cousin  and  I 
were  silent,  or  talked  of  common  things.  We 
even  descended  so  far  as  into  criticism  of  Gwen- 
dolen Sims-Bigg's  hat,  its  congruity  with  woodland 
picnics,  and  whether  or  no  it  was  to  be  thought 
that  Harry  Mansel  spent  any  fraction  of  the  irre- 
coverable hours  on  the  ends  of  his  moustache.  It 
occurred  to  me  to  ask  if  I  was  right  in  thinking 
284 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

that  somehow  or  other  Harry  had  fallen  out  of 
Lady  Anne's  good  graces  to-day.  I  said  nothing 
about  my  observation  that  Mary  herself  had  been 
absolutely  truculent  to  the  young  man  when  they 
had  come  across  each  other  ;  for  she  had  carried 
her  feud  with  him  for  half  the  summer  at  least. 
My  cousin's  expressions  are,  as  a  rule,  perspicuous 
to  a  fault ;  but  her  answer  on  this  occasion  was,  to 
my  comprehension,  irrelevant  and  even  enigmatical. 
All  I  could  get  from  her  was  that  Harry's  leave  was 
up  in  another  fortnight,  and  if  people  wouldbz  fools, 
they  must  go  their  own  gate ;  and  she  immediately 
changed  the  subject,  returning  in  a  very  critical 
temper  to  Miss  Sims-Bigg's  hat  and  hair,  and  a 
way  I  am  told  she  has  of  looking  arch  out  of  the 
corners  of  her  eyes.  We  presently  heard  halloos 
from  the  higher  wood,  summoning  stragglers  to  tea, 
and  when  we  reached  the  High  Beeches  we  found 
the  rest  of  the  company  gathered  about  the  kettle 
singing  over  a  stick  fire,  tablecloths  spread  and 
cups  ranged,  and  baskets  of  Burntoak  provision 
lying  among  the  anemones.  Mrs.  Ventom  sur- 
veyed her  preparations  with  an  air  of  tolerant 
allowance  for  the  eccentric  folk,  who  with  good 
tea-tables  of  their  own  at  home  must  take  their 
pleasure  in  this  heathenish  way,  like  so  many 
tramps.  The  tea  was  not  the  light-hearted  affair 
it  should  have  been  :  there  was  a  vague  sense  of 
failure  in  the  air;  Lady  Anne  was  perceptibly 
holding  a  temper  on  the  curb ;  Molly  Crofts  did 
285 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

not  seem  to  be  herself ;  Mary  Enderby  was  almost 
rude  to  Gwendolen  Sims-Bigg,  and  Harry,  on  the 
outskirts  of  the  company,  seemed  to  be  the  victim 
of  a  solid  gloom.  Mrs.  Ventom  waited  on  us  with 
an  air  of  philosophic  detachment  which  suggested 
that  she,  at  any  rate,  if  she  liked,  could  have  told 
us  what  was  the  matter  with  the  afternoon. 

When  tea  was  done,  and  we  began  to  make  our 
way  down  towards  the  road  again,  I  found  my 
cousin's  humour  had  not  by  any  means  improved. 
She  thought  if  people  must  pair  off  two  and  two, 
like  Noah's  animals,  they  might  shuffle  themselves 
a  little  now  and  then.  I  took  the  compliment  for 
what  it  was  worth,  conceiving  it  to  be  aimed  a 
good  way  over  my  head.  We  could  hear  confused 
voices  here  and  there,  in  the  wood-walks  behind 
us,  of  people  who  were  evidently  in  no  hurry  to 
get  to  the  barway,  and  as  Mary  seemed  more 
inclined  to  listen  to  them  than  to  me,  I  held  my 
tongue  and  let  my  thoughts  descend  to  the  general 
from  the  particular.  The  young  people,  as  far  as 
I  could  judge,  had  not  been  so  ecstatically  happier 
than  the  elders  in  the  charm  of  the  spring  day. 
By  all  visible  signs  I  had  found  my  account  with 
the  woods  and  the  weather  at  a  much  better  rate 
than  either  Harry  Mansel  or  Molly  Crofts,  let  us 
say.  There  is  often  a  tragic  touch  in  hours  such 
as  these,  a  pang  in  the  very  pleasure,  for  something 
going  by,  unseizable  for  mere  plenty,  like  the 
million  primroses  beyond  the  capacity  of  kerchief 
286 


LONEWOOD   CORNER 

or  basket ;  but  I  doubt  if  that  feeling  would  pre- 
sent itself  definitely  enough  to  these  girls  and  boys 
to  affect  their  natural  gaiety.  Perhaps  it  is  by 
virtue  of  our  age  that  we  seniors  are  able  to  make 
the  better  bargain,  and  get  more  real  glorying  out 
of  the  good  days.  After  all,  we  have  learnt  to 
take  hold  less  greedily  than  once  we  did  of  the 
things  held  out  to  us,  and  the  ultimate  refusal  is 
less  poignant  when  it  comes.  Instead  of  trying  to 
fill  our  hands  or  our  baskets  from  Time's  flower 
posies,  we  hear  him  say  "  Smell  how  good ! "  and 
with  hands  behind  us  put  our  noses  with  a  fair 
show  of  content  to  the  bunch  before  it  passes. 
Perhaps  a  man's  days  have  not  run  altogether 
amiss  if  they  make  it  practicable  in  an  hour  such 
as  this  to  feel  the  fundamental  comedy  running 
through  the  whole  play ;  and  if  he  have  got  beyond 
joining  in  the  choric  figures,  at  least  to  beat  time 
to  the  trochaics  from  the  back  benches  of  the 
theatre. 

I  was  becoming  a  little  tired  of  saying  nothing, 
and  had  begun  to  give  utterance  to  some  reflections 
about  substance  and  shadow,  eating  one's  cake  and 
having  it,  when  Mary  got  up  from  the  tree-root  we 
had  been  sitting  on,  and  said  it  was  no  good  wait- 
ing all  day  for  people  who  had  no  idea  of  time, 
and  that  we  had  better  get  on.  We  had  not  taken 
two  steps  when  we  heard  a  laugh  behind  us,  and 
into  the  clearing  at  the  end  of  the  long  ride  came 
Harry  Mansel  and  Molly  Crofts  together.  I 
287 


LONEWOOD  CORNER 

caught  a  glimpse  of  Molly's  face,  and  a  momentary 
impression  of  the  two  figures  hand-in-hand  as  they 
came  down  the  path,  and  then  my  cousin  seized 
me  "by  the  elbow  and  jerked  me  aside  into  the 
turning  of  the  ride  by  which  we  were  standing.  I 
had  followed  her  indication  promptly  enough,  and 
the  hazels  were  perhaps  sufficiently  budded  to 
make  a  screen  and  hide  us,  if  the  two  had  had  eyes 
to  look  our  way. 

"  Come  on,  and  let  us  get  out  of  this,"  said  Mary, 
in  a  whisper  of  the  tensest  energy.  "  They  won't 
want  us  bothering  about  here."  So  after  standing 
and  holding  our  breath  like  conspirators  behind 
our  covert,  we  presently  made  our  way  to  the  bar- 
way  by  roundabout  and  unlikely  paths.  We  found 
that  we  were  behind  all  the  rest,  and  so  walked 
down  to  the  village  by  ourselves.  My  cousin  was 
rather  absent-minded,  and  quite  uncivilly  taciturn ; 
but  when  we  said  good  night  at  the  head  of  the 
street,  while  the  twilight  flushed  a  dull  rose  from 
the  afterglow,  there  was  a  look  in  her  face  such  as 
I  remembered  had  shone  on  an  evening  like  this  a 
year  ago,  a  reflection,  I  think,  of  the  light  which 
we  had  seen  for  a  moment  in  Molly's  eyes. 


THE   END 


PRINTED  BY  WILLIAM  CLOWES  AND  SONS,  LIMITED,   LONDON  AND  BECCLES. 


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